Google’s new AI Overview drops in the US

SEO

SEO specialists the world over have been all-a-twitter since Google announced it was planning to incorporate AI into Search. 

The feature has been in Google Labs for a long time, but finally, the wait is over. 

Previously known as “Search Generative Experience”, Google’s new AI Overview feature has launched in the US. 

It’s likely that once this rollout is complete, Google will extend AI Overview to all other regions. 

What is Google’s “AI Overview” feature?

Google’s AI Overview is a feature that appears at the top of your search results. It provides an AI-generated answer to your query. Depending on the query that you have submitted, you will get a different type of AI response. 

Here’s what it looks like for an informational search:

There are lots of differences between this and a current informational search. 

• The AI overview dominates the space above the fold. It will give a basic answer to the question and highlight websites that corroborate the information. Eventually, you will be able to personalise your AI-generated result and delve deeper into the answer. The image above shows a deeper response.
• Sponsored content (e.g. Google Ads)
• People Also Ask – a list of similar questions with results and links to the source website. 
• Organic results are now below the fold – you have to scroll down quite a long way to get to these results. 

The AI Overview will be more developed based on the complexity of the query. So, if you’re looking for “the best restaurant in Birmingham that serves gluten-free food and is in walking distance from New Street Station” you’ll get:

• A result that shows a carousel of image tiles for the different restaurants Google has judged meet your criteria. 
• A map showing the location of your options.
• People Also Ask – a list of similar questions with results and links to the source website. 
• Organic results are now below the fold – you have to scroll down quite a long way to get to these results.

The AI Overview might also go beyond your original query, by surfacing content that is related or a natural “next step”. 

Beyond search

Eventually, AI Overview will push Google Search beyond delivering search results. 

Google plans for AI Overview to surface results for certain “planning” prompts. This is easier to explain with examples:

• “Plan a 3-day meal schedule for a vegan that’s easy to prepare”
• “Plan a holiday to Malta and include the best tourist attractions and most well-reviewed hotels.”
• “Plan a meal schedule for a family of four on a budget”. 

This blurs the line between “search engine” and “AI tool” – Google is recognising that there are certain AI prompts that it can deliver answers to. How far Google pushes into this area remains to be seen. 

The implications of AI Overview for users

As a user, AI Overview will be really helpful.  You will get information much faster, particularly when making more complex queries. 

In the past, if the Featured Snippet didn’t fully answer your query, you had to look for a blue link (i.e. website) that did. Even if you did find a blue link that seemed to answer the question, you may have needed to look elsewhere if, after clicking through, the content itself didn’t completely answer the query.

Now, you will get a truly personalised response, drawing on all the content on the web. This can make searching much more efficient. 

The implications of AI Overview for businesses

Whilst the outlook for users is (currently) positive, it is more mixed for businesses or those in marketing. 

If you’re seeking to improve your online visibility by increasing organic traffic, then AI Overview may seriously hamper your efforts. 

Just because you’re ranked in the top 10 on organic search doesn’t mean you’ll get referenced in the AI Overview results. And even if you do, you may not get users clicking through to your website – why would they need to? They’ve already got their answer in the Overview. 

When asked to give results for “best of” queries, Google seems to make judgements based on user-generated content all over the web. 

So, this might be Google Reviews and comments on Quora or Reddit. In short, Google is factoring in the views of “normal” people much more when deciding what businesses it is going to list for commercial searches. It remains to be seen whether these factors are given more weight than website traffic or domain authority. 

AI Overview: tactics to help you optimise your site

1. Make sure your website is easy to crawl

Technical SEO has always been important – search engine bots need to be able to crawl your website easily if you’re to ensure your content is being surfaced in the results pages. But AI Overview makes this requirement even more important. Check that your website’s crawlability is top-notch. 

How to improve your website’s crawlability

• Submit a sitemap to Google Search Console. Most SEO plugins create a sitemap for you and you can submit it easily via your GSC account. 
• Improve internal linking. We highly recommend LinkWhisper as a plugin if you need to improve your internal linking quickly. 
• Fix broken links. Broken links are links that are returning a 404 error – e.g. that the destination has disappeared. An SEO audit tool can uncover these errors. We use Screaming Frog and highly recommend it. 
• Build a logical website architecture. There is so much that goes into this that it’s worthy of a whole blog post. But, in short, make sure that your website is structured in a logical way. So, if you’re a commercial cleaning company, you might group “deep cleaning” and “window cleaning” under “services” and “cleaning in Birmingham” and “cleaning in Solihull” under “locations”.
• Use breadcrumbs. These are navigation aids that allow users to click back and forth between interlinked pages. They typically look like this: services > deep cleaning > deep cleaning for offices and appear at the top of a page. 

2. Structure blogs in an AI Overview-friendly way

It’s been suggested that if users are going to click through to a website from an AI-generated answer (think those websites in the carousel), then it’s more likely to be one of the first websites that are featured. So, ranking in this part of the AI Overview result may improve site traffic (or at least limit the damage!).

AI Overview favours content that is a direct answer to a specific question. It also tends to surface content that is presented in short, manageable sentences. It also favours content that appears at the top of the blog post. 

This has been proven to work within Google Labs. I managed to get it to work with a blog post that was already ranking well organically. The extent to which it will continue to work in the “real world” remains to be seen. But, for now, the advice is:

1. Identify which blogs are ranking in the top 5 organically.
2. Write a short concise answer at the beginning of your blog post that answers the query exactly. Use short, simple sentences. 
3. Then, go into more detail, fleshing things out and delving deeper (as you would normally). 

Other ideas that aren’t proven yet

There are so many unknowns and this feature is so new that it’s difficult to offer many strategies that are proven to work. 

Here are some other thoughts that clever bods around the web are offering as potential strategies to support your optimisation efforts. 

• Build a profile on Q&A and information websites. AI Overview does surface a lot of information from sites such as Quora and Reddit. Making sure you’re an authority here may lead to better visibility. 
• Create overview content. As AI Overview often goes beyond the query to offer logical “next step” information, creating content that covers everything from initial research to final enquiry may improve visibility. 

Don’t lose sight of Google’s aims

Over and over again, Google has stressed the importance of creating helpful content that satisfies user search intent. So, when you’re looking to adapt to Google’s AI Overview update it will be important not to sacrifice quality for quick fixes. 

In the words of the fictional Lance Corporal Jack Jones of Dad’s Army fame “Don’t panic!”

Continue to publish high-quality content that supports your users/prospects along each stage of their customer journey.

There are so many unknowns that it’s important not to be too trigger-happy in your response. 

Remaining within Google’s guidelines will always be a wise choice in the long-run. 

A word of warning for Google (like they care!)

But.. and it’s a big but…Google needs to be aware of this issue:

It’s difficult to get excited about creating high-quality content if the chances are you’ll never get a user reading it in its original form. Why go to all that trouble – particularly as websites don’t get credits within AI Overview? (Google is very clear that the websites that appear in the carousel corroborate their answer but aren’t necessarily the source of the information). 

If website owners/ businesses think they’re not getting any value from the content (e.g. no traffic), then they’ll stop spending time creating it. After all, high-quality content takes time to write – time busy businesses could spend elsewhere. 

This will leave Google with a problem in the long term. 

If no one’s creating up-to-date content, then its AI Overview won’t have anything to draw on. 

Google prides itself on organising the world’s information and surfacing the “highest quality” content to its users. So, if they’re not able to do this it might affect its brand long term. 

Maybe all of us content writers could go on strike and refuse to post anything new for 6-months? A bit like the 19th Century Luddites sabotaging their factory’s machines?

On second thoughts though look what happened to them?! I don’t know what the digital equivalent of execution and transportation is… maybe manual deindexation?

AI Overview isn’t the end of Search, and it isn’t the end of SEO. But it might be one more step towards a huge falling out between marketers and Google.