Preparing for AI Search with Google AI Overviews (SGE)
Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2024 9:26 am
AI in digital marketing is here to stay, and there's little doubt that the world of search marketing is on track to be turned upside down by developments in generative AI.
Google's AI Overviews (previously known as Search Generative Experience, or SGE) is still in its early phases but it's already promising to upend standard concepts and approaches to search, and consequently to digital marketing as a whole.
Google's utlimate goal is to better understand what you want, so that it can give you the perfect answer. And AI Overviews is how it displays that answer.
To provide insights into how AI Overviews works, Lindsey Schrant of Neil Patel Digital joined us to look at this new world of search.
What is AI Overviews?
What does AI Overviews look like?
Query types
The limitations of AI Overviews
8 likely impacts of AI Overviews
5 tips to prepare your site for AI Overviews
Top Tip: This article was adapted from Lindsey's webinar which is tg data available on-demand or you can listen to the podcast version.
What is AI Overviews?
On May 10th 2023, Google announced that it was working on its AI-powered search results, one of the most important visual changes to Google search engine results page (SERP) in many years. Like a highly advanced version of featured snippets, AI Overviews uses AI to generate detailed search results that aim to give users the exact information that they’re looking for (and then some).
Note: AI Overviews are being slowly rolled out across regions. Keep an eye on Google's blog to see when your region is included.
AI Overviews in practice
So, does all this mean that AI Overviews replace the traditional SERP? No, there are still SERPs, but they will be much more detailed.
You can think of AI Overviews as an experience, a conversation with your search engine. You can ask it detailed, conversational questions and, using AI, it will generate detailed answers. That’s the search generative experience.
What this means in practice is that you can write long conversational queries, and AI Overviews returns detailed results, as well as links to help you conduct your own further research. In time, the search engine will better understand what you want, and it will better understand the content on the Web. This will enable AI Overviews to answer your questions much more comprehensively than ever before.
ChatGPT Prompt Guide for your Digital Marketing Plan
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What does AI Overviews look like?
What do you see when you enter a query into AI Overviews?
The response has several elements.
Generative answer: This is the AI-generated answer to your query. Unlike the traditional SERP, it’s not a list of websites. It’s a narrative flow based on what AI Overviews was able to find on the Internet. (In this way, it is similar to the response that displays when you type a query into ChatGPT.)
Dropdown arrows display beside the generated text. Clicking these brings up the sources of the text, so you can assess the validity of the information.
Website carousel: A carousel of images displays a series of links to websites that provide you with further information about your query.
Google's AI Overviews (previously known as Search Generative Experience, or SGE) is still in its early phases but it's already promising to upend standard concepts and approaches to search, and consequently to digital marketing as a whole.
Google's utlimate goal is to better understand what you want, so that it can give you the perfect answer. And AI Overviews is how it displays that answer.
To provide insights into how AI Overviews works, Lindsey Schrant of Neil Patel Digital joined us to look at this new world of search.
What is AI Overviews?
What does AI Overviews look like?
Query types
The limitations of AI Overviews
8 likely impacts of AI Overviews
5 tips to prepare your site for AI Overviews
Top Tip: This article was adapted from Lindsey's webinar which is tg data available on-demand or you can listen to the podcast version.
What is AI Overviews?
On May 10th 2023, Google announced that it was working on its AI-powered search results, one of the most important visual changes to Google search engine results page (SERP) in many years. Like a highly advanced version of featured snippets, AI Overviews uses AI to generate detailed search results that aim to give users the exact information that they’re looking for (and then some).
Note: AI Overviews are being slowly rolled out across regions. Keep an eye on Google's blog to see when your region is included.
AI Overviews in practice
So, does all this mean that AI Overviews replace the traditional SERP? No, there are still SERPs, but they will be much more detailed.
You can think of AI Overviews as an experience, a conversation with your search engine. You can ask it detailed, conversational questions and, using AI, it will generate detailed answers. That’s the search generative experience.
What this means in practice is that you can write long conversational queries, and AI Overviews returns detailed results, as well as links to help you conduct your own further research. In time, the search engine will better understand what you want, and it will better understand the content on the Web. This will enable AI Overviews to answer your questions much more comprehensively than ever before.
ChatGPT Prompt Guide for your Digital Marketing Plan
Download Free
What does AI Overviews look like?
What do you see when you enter a query into AI Overviews?
The response has several elements.
Generative answer: This is the AI-generated answer to your query. Unlike the traditional SERP, it’s not a list of websites. It’s a narrative flow based on what AI Overviews was able to find on the Internet. (In this way, it is similar to the response that displays when you type a query into ChatGPT.)
Dropdown arrows display beside the generated text. Clicking these brings up the sources of the text, so you can assess the validity of the information.
Website carousel: A carousel of images displays a series of links to websites that provide you with further information about your query.