Generative search tools are great a linking to articles… that don't exist!

Whether we like it or not, much of our online experiences will be powered by AI. This definitely goes for using search engines. We’ve seen some pretty impressive generative search tools. Well, they’re impressive when they work. However, much of the time, that’s not the case. A new report shines a light on how generative search engines are just so bad at being search engines.

Currently, companies are trying to push AI search engines down our throats, and they’re marketing them as the future of Search. However, these tools are far from perfect. We’re getting reports of tools like ChatGPT Search not linking to proper sources and being bad at reporting news. Also, let’s not forget about Google’s AI Overviews’ numerous embarrassing mishaps.

Google’s AI Overviews are the worst when it comes to hallucinated links

The point of an AI search engine is to give you the exact information you’re looking for without traveling to other pages (who needs ad revenue? ‘m I right?). Well, companies really pride themselves on how often they actually link out to other pages. Some search engines actually show up to 10 links! Impressive! However, what’s the point of clicking on a link if it takes you nowhere?

This is what a bunch of people have to deal with when they use AI search engines. A recent report from MobileMoxie (via an SEO conference) shined a light on how our favorite AI search engines fail at just linking to original articles. In the chart pictured below, we see some of the most popular generative search tools and how they do when linking to original articles. There’s Grok-3, Grok-2, Gemini, ChatGPT Search, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Perplexity, and Perplexity Pro.

We see that when it comes to identifying the wrong website when trying to link back to a source, Grok-3 actually did the worst. It wasn’t the worst in any particular category, but it was pretty bad when it came to identifying the wrong article, missing links, and hallucinating links that led to 404 pages.

Next was Gemini, and this one was the worst when it came to hallucinating links. This is bad because hallucinations are one of the worst issues when it comes to generative AI. It also linked to the wrong website a fair number of times.

DeepSeek was the absolute worst when it came to linking to the wrong article. This is actually a pretty big issue with all of the rest of the tools. In fact, it’s the primary issue with all of them.

ChatGPT Search did really bad when it came to linking to the wrong article, and it also has a problem with missing links. It’s undoubtedly the most powerful AI tool on the market. So, it’s pretty sad to see it having so many issues like this. OpenAI is the main company licensing the data from major news organizations. So, we see that it’s doing a terrible job at linking to those companies’ websites.

Grok-2 was almost as bad as ChatGPT Search when it came to linking to the wrong articles and missing links. It also had some trouble with hallucinating links and linking to the publisher’s homepage rather than the article.

Copilot, Perplexity, and Perplexity Pro were all pretty much tied with one another. Out of the bunch, it looks like Perplexity performed the best. This shouldn’t surprise most people because Perplexity is primarily an AI search engine.

This is a pretty big issue

There’s no denying the elephant in the room. The CEOs and spokespersons at these companies tell us how great these tools are. We’re constantly told how they’ll revolutionize how we search online. However, they just don’t tell us stuff like this. We’re constantly hearing about all of the millions of new users on a specific platform, but we don’t hear how most of them have to deal with issues like missing and hallucinating links.

What makes this even worse is the fact that journalists are losing their jobs over this. It’d be one thing to lose your job to a faster and more efficient employee, but it’s another thing entirely to lose it to an employee who can’t even do the job! Publications are bleeding traffic and money because companies keep pushing these AI tools. However, they continue to show that they can’t do the simple task that a search engine can do.

So, what’s the point? Why are AI search engines not only stealing views away from websites but failing at doing their core job? It’s the bloated and starry-eyed vision that AI will be this hyper-lucrative venture. Major companies are so greedy that they’re willing to screw over millions of people just for possibility of money in the future.

We hope that more information like this gets out to people because the people need to know what’s going on behind the AI technology they use every day.

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