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Google’s Post-AI Direction Is Harming Local Entertainment
Without wishing to bite the hand that feeds us, Google’s direction since the arrival of AI search is concerning.
For more than 20 years, a group of independent Australian websites has supported and promoted local events, venues, shows and experiences—covering entertainment, activities, attractions, art, music and theatre for Australians.
Increasingly, Google places an AI-generated answer above sponsored listings and traditional search results. Genuine What’s On websites offering comprehensive local coverage may not appear until pages four to eight—well beyond where most people will ever look.
Consider this simple search:
theatre shows melbourne 2026
Google’s AI Overview presents just seven productions, despite more than 80 theatre shows currently listed across Melbourne.
The problems do not end there:
- Only two of the six cited links lead to an authorised ticketing agency.
- Incredibly, two links point to Viagogo, a ticket-resale marketplace.
- One of Melbourne’s leading productions, A Beautiful Noise – The Neil Diamond Musical, is missing entirely.
- The answer gives users the impression that seven productions represent Melbourne’s current theatre offering.
The traditional results are not much better. Apart from What’s On Melbourne, the leading results include individual theatres, RACV, Time Out (with only one production featured) and Fever, which only promotes its own events.
These are not comprehensive or accurate results for “theatre shows Melbourne 2026.”
The most useful answer would be an independent, regularly updated guide covering the full range of productions, regardless of theatre, promoter, producer or ticketing company.
This is about more than website rankings.
When comprehensive independent publishers disappear from view, audiences see a narrower selection of entertainment. Smaller productions and venues lose valuable exposure. Authorised ticket sellers can be displaced by resale marketplaces, while Google’s AI presents a short and incomplete list as though it were a reliable overview.
What has been lost is discovery: the ability for readers to see the genuine breadth of what is on and choose for themselves.
Are independent What’s On publishers misguided in raising this concern?
Ask the venues, producers and promoters struggling to reach audiences. They will tell you how difficult things have become.