What Google AI Overviews Mean for Your Search Experience
Throughout 2024, Google rolled out its AI Overviews to the search engine, with the goal of improving users search experience. The implementation of this technology highlights not only Google’s evolving search experience, but also the way people use Google. This shift towards generative AI is indicative of the growing reliance society puts on it, and it has also had a dramatic effect on how Google is used by users and businesses, as well as having repercussions for SEO practices.
What are Google AI Overviews?
Google AI Overviews are AI generated summaries related to the users search query. When a user inputs their query and presses search, the generative AI explores the internet to find relevant information and comes up with its own summarised version of its findings. It then presents this to the user who gets their answer without having to click on a website, and this process is done almost instantly. The AI Overview offers users a quick synopsis of a topic and also contains links to websites to explore the information further.
Traditionally, Google’s search engine results page (SERP) would be structured with sponsored content at the top and/or bottom of the page with organic results showing in-between. However, with the introduction of Google’s AI Overview this has now changed. Now when a search is entered into Google, the AI Overview is the first result, showing up and immediately greeting the user with an answer they were hoping to find, therefore making it less likely for users to scroll down and see the sponsored results or the organic results listed below.
How AI Overviews work
As briefly mentioned in the previous paragraph, AI Overviews are created by Google’s generative AI which scans the internet for the information most relevant to the search, which then generates a summary of its findings to present to the user in a way that’s directly related to the user’s search. This is particularly useful for users making relatively simple and straight forward searches, such as summarising information, making comparisons and providing recommendations. However, with Google AI Overview still being relatively new, it does have some shortcomings. AI can struggle to understand or convey the subtleties of human emotion and tone, it can also struggle to provide accurate information to more complex or nuanced searches. Google’s AI Overviews rely on a combination of language models and data sources (including user interactions) in order to learn and become more effective in providing summaries to users, and so it will constantly be changing and becoming more effective.
Benefits for Users
AI Overviews have a variety of benefits to its users and the more it continues to learn and increase its accuracy the more beneficial it will become. Currently the main benefits of Google’s AI Overviews are convenience, context rich summaries and multi-source credibility.
AI Overviews create a much more convenient and streamlined search experience for users. Due to the updated SERP layout with the AI Overview being the top result, the user is met with a clear and succinct summary, directly related to what they were hoping to find.
Another beneficial factor regarding AI Overviews is that the results provided have directly applied the research to the context of the query. For example, when I Googled “how will AI affect sport in the next 5 years” the answer I received from the AI Overview was “In the next 5 years, AI will significantly impact sports through personalized training, enhanced fan experiences, and improved performance analysis”. As you can see in this example, the AI directly addresses the question and relates it to the context in which it was asked.
Implications for SEO and Content Creators
How will AI Overviews affect SEO? Well, there are a variety of implications that can be drawn, including reduced website traffic and click-through rates (CTR), Increased competition to link in AI Overview summaries, and an increased importance of structured data.
Declining website traffic and CTR will become increasingly common the more popular AI Overviews become. Because AI Overviews are the first result on the SERP, as well as the fact it tailors its content to each users search, it is making it less likely that users will search beyond the AI Overview. And so, ranking highly on the SERPs, as much as it is useful, is not as meaningful as it once was.
Instead of ranking highly in the SERPs, it is now more beneficial to be featured in the AI Overviews. If your website content is authoritative, user friendly and contains high quality content it is more likely to be featured in the AI Overviews, and if featured in the overview, it will receive a link as well, with these backlinks becoming more likely to direct traffic to your website over traditional high ranking SERP results.
Another large factor in making it onto the AI Overview features is having structured data that is easy for the search engine to understand. A key framework in helping to better structure website content is the E-E-A-T framework which we talk about in depth on this blog post
https://www.marketingmix.com.au/e-e-a-t-and-seo-what-you-need-to-know/.
Tips for optimising for AI overviews
Whilst it is difficult to get a mention in the AI Overviews there are some tips that can increase your chances of getting a mention and a backlink from the overview. As mentioned above you should make sure your content is well structured, user friendly, authoritative and adheres to the E-E-A-T framework in order to make your content easier to crawl and to make your website appear more reliable to crawlers. On top of this, there are a few other tips that could help swing the odds in your favour. These include, using schema markup, directly addressing user questions, and using clear headings and frequently asked questions (FAQs).
Schema markup is a bit of code that is added into your websites HTML, and it works to structure your websites data. This structuring of data makes for vast improvements in the search engines ability to understand your content, makes your content more visible to search engines and provides content rich snippets of your websites content. Put simply, the schema markup creates an environment where it is much easier to analyse and understand your website and your websites content, leading to an increased chance that your website will get a mention and a backlink from the AI Overview.
Being able to directly and effectively answer users’ questions is another way to boost your chances of being mentioned in the overviews. Of course, trying to guess what users will be searching can be difficult, however, if you can effectively answer user questions you are much more likely to receive backlinks in the overview.
Something as simple as using clear headings and including FAQs can also boost your chances of appearing in the AI Overviews. This is because, despite being simple, they both improve the websites user experience. By having clear headings, it helps search engines better understand the layout of the website and the content of the page leading to a better ranking in the organic search results or an increased chance of getting a backlink from the overview. Including well written FAQs can help directly answer user queries and can also help target keywords which can then lead to a better SEO outcome for your website.
Conclusion
SEO is an ever-evolving landscape which requires constant attention, and with Google’s introduction of the AI Overviews, that is no different. The introduction of AI has had some people saying that SEO is dying however this couldn’t be further from the truth. In a constantly changing environment the introduction of AI is merely that, a change, but a large one that needs to be considered. AI Overviews will continue to improve as it learns, and it will continue to make the search experience easier and more efficient for users, and this has and will continue to come with drastic changes in terms of the future of SEO. These changes include a decreased importance of high-ranking organic content and even sponsored results, and the importance has now shifted to being mentioned in the AI Overviews. Now more than ever people need to start adjusting their SEO strategies and start planning for further changes in future due to the increasing prevalence of AI.
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