Google's AI Overviews (SGE) is live - here's what to expect
SEO is not dead, and in fact it's more alive than ever. Embrace these changes as an opportunity.
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by the Digital PR agency Search Intelligence, which uses PR methods to grow a link portfolio and North Star Inbound, which is a recommended agency for penalty recovery. See their case studies linked in the newsletter.
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Read Google’s official AI Overviews announcement here
As I had predicted multiple times throughout the last months, Google’s answer to ChatGPT and AI, in general, launched this week at the annual Google IO on May 14th.
This product was teased a year ago at IO 2023 and launched in an opt-in beta on Memorial Day weekend last year. Since then, Google has made a handful of announcements and tweaks to the product, but uncharacteristically, for Google’s launch-fast culture, it took forever to pull the trigger on a non-opt-in beta.
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Digital PR link building works, but only after you've done these things.
Are you only relying on Digital PR for links?
↳ It probably won't work.
Are you creating average content, with the hope that Digital PR will do the job anyway?
↳ It probably won't work.
Are you ignoring search intent, with the hope that Digital PR will boost the site anyway?
↳ It probably won't work.
Search Generative Experience
The product, then called Search Generative Experiences, now called AI Overviews, wasn’t exposed to non-opted-in users until almost two months ago. I had heard rumors about it launching this year at IO, but I didn’t give any credibility to those rumors until the public beta was announced.
What is AI overviews?
If you haven’t yet seen Google’s AI answers and don’t want to wait until it shows up in your searches automatically, you can still join the labs here. If you are country-restricted you will have to use a VPN that changes your location to country with this feature enabled.
AI overviews are an attempt to take unstructured data gathered from web content and give a structured answer to a search query, just like answer boxes.
This isn’t always a great fit or an easy solution, so expect the product to continue to change; however, this is what it is. (There are of course AI hallucinations and very strange answers, but they will go away quickly)
Many of the Google “killers” from ChatGPT to Perplexity to Meta that have been hyped over the last 18 months have had this one feature: answering search queries with content instead of links.
AI Overviews is Google’s own Google killer.
Google very likely did not and does not want to upset the business model it has used over the last twenty-five years of serving up links in responses to queries, but it has been dragged to this party, and it intends to keep its dominance.
When and where does it go live?
Google announced it would go live this week, and I already see it in some of my non-opted-in Google accounts. Unsurprisingly, it is only launching in the US for the time being. Many questions about liability, content ownership, and monetization still need to be answered, so Google is derisking this launch by avoiding especially litigious regions like the EU.
The beta of SGE went live in India and Japan very quickly after its launch, so I assume the same will be true for this official launch, too.
What is the expected impact?
There have been guesses as to the impact of AI Overviews on search results, and I think they are all just guesses.
The impact on SEO results will vary widely across industries and categories. For informational content that could quickly be answered in an AI overview, the clickthrough rate will likely decline by well over 50%. For example, this sort of query is answered on the search page for most people without the need to click a result.
There could be very little traffic loss on topics with deep content or products/service pages that can’t easily be summarized.
The best way to assess the impact is to look at the top queries in Google Search Console and have an honest conversation with yourself or leadership about how much UNIQUE value your content offers to a user. If it can be cannibalized by an AI Overview, as unfair as that might be, it is still the new reality.
How to optimize for SEO in this new reality
Many will not like these new changes, but Google has worked on this for a year, so expect them to stick around. Top-of-funnel or “head” keywords will simply disappear as targets because users will be satisfied by the answers that AI overview will give them.
Of course, this will not be 100% of users, but the value of these keywords will decline significantly. I think there never really was that much value if these keywords were tracked to conversion, so this new Google is just laying that reality bare.
The new SEO will focus on the user who has progressed further in a funnel because they have already become educated by an AI overview. This might mean focusing on more specific and longer keyphrases, but it also means that you will want to focus even more on features and differentiation from the competition because you can assume the user now knows to look for this.
(I wrote a much more detailed version of this strategy here.)
The need for SEO experts
Most websites are unaware of these changes and will not know they need to pivot their strategies until traffic declines. In this new world, the SEO expert is more valuable than ever because this skill set is in dire need, as companies need help navigating this change.
SEO will never die until users stop searching, and I don’t think that will ever happen. This change is in no way ushering in the impending death of SEO; instead, search is growing into a more mature adolescence, and there is a massive need for responsible guidance.
The disappearance of tools
Also, with this change, many industry tools will cease to be as valuable as they were last week. Keyword research and monthly search volume numbers aren’t as necessary when creating mid-funnel content for a specific user. This content will be made based on user knowledge rather than search data.
Even Google Search Console will be less valuable because it may take some time until AI overview data is broken out in this tool. This means that the search experts needed are people with a natural talent for SEO who can be creative and develop strategies without just screenshotting charts from popular SEO tools.
Get in touch if I can help
I am confident that SEO hiring will grow in the next few weeks, so if you are looking for talent or are one of those rare creative SEO experts, please get in touch so I can help connect you to each other.
Lastly, if I can help you develop a new strategy for adapting to AI overviews, let me know!
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“SEO will never die until users stop searching, and I don’t think that will ever happen. This change is in no way ushering in the impending death of SEO; instead, search is growing into a more mature adolescence, and there is a massive need for responsible guidance.”
This *feels* like one of the most important statements in here.
I’ve appreciated your careful guidance and nuance on this topic over the months. I try to avoid clicking for these types of high-level one-answer queries as much as possible.
Amazing insight as always, Eli. Thank you.