Everything We Know About Google’s AI Overview And Its Impact On Blogs
How can you optimize your content for AI overviews?
Google has been experimenting with Search Generative Experience (SGE) for over a year, using generative AI in search results.
This feature went live on May 14, 2024 (the date of the Google I/O conference) under the name ‘AI Overview’.
Although this will take some time, it’s useful to have an idea of the possible impact on SEO so that you, as a website/online store owner or consultant, can anticipate it.
What is the AI overview?
In short: Google’s AI overview is a new feature of Google Search. It is a summary of search results generated by Gemini that appears at the top of the SERP (search results page).
These overviews combine information from different sources and are designed to quickly provide users with a clear picture of their search query.
With this new feature, Google wants to prevent Google users from switching to open AI tools such as ChatGPT. And they hope to be able to keep visitors on their platform for longer. They would like to continue maintaining the steady flow of Google users and, ideally, grow even more.
First experiences with the feature
In total, I asked Google approximately 200 surveys/research questions, with these questions in mind:
What are AI overviews like?
When do they appear and when not?
Does it add value for me as a user?
Am I getting extremely excited?
Can I do anything with it as a user?
What is the impact of the AI overview on SEO?
When will you see the AI overview?
Google doesn’t show an AI overview for every search. This feature appeared in less than 25% of my searches (over 200). It wasn’t very easy to make the AI overview appear. The system itself determines when generative answers are useful to the user.
The AI overview appeared for these search questions:
What to do with a headache?
Is McDonald’s healthy?
What is the average income per year?
How old is the oldest person in the world?
Does SEO cost money?
Which superfoods increase metabolism?
How can I improve my bounce rate?
What can I do at Efteling?
I noticed that the AI overview appears mainly with informative search intentions. For questions that start with these words:
How?
What?
Why?
I was especially curious to know if AI overviews appear with more commercial search queries, such as the questions below:
Where can I buy Nike Jordans?
How much do Nike Jordans cost?
Where in New York can I find the best pizza?
Give me sites with the best prices for Nike sneakers
Where to buy cheap supplements
However, the AI overview hardly appeared for these types of questions.
Are Google’s AI overviews useful?
Apart from the AI overview errors that you need to put glue on pizza and that eating rocks is healthy, I was curious to know how useful these AI overviews are.
I use Google’s term ‘useful’ on purpose.
As the founder of useful content, these Google AI overviews should also meet this criterion. If I want to read the EEAT and the useful content guidelines, I’ll probably spend hours going through it.
So they’ve probably done their homework thoroughly when it comes to this AI overview feature. So it’s time to check out the usefulness of Google’s AI overview. Here are 2 examples.
Example 1: Increase bounce rate
One of my Google searches was: “How can I improve my bounce rate”. A few things stood out.
1. You don’t get a short answer
When I ask how I can improve my bounce rate, an AI overview appears. What immediately struck me was that I didn’t get a short answer. An article type is displayed with only the title and 2 paragraphs visible. I still don’t know much. A quality meta tag is more useful.
2. The result is purely factual
The tips consist only of facts. No conclusion, opinion, or advice, they hit home with:
Optimize images, use compression tools, and delete unnecessary files to speed up loading times. Users may leave the site if it doesn’t load quickly or may assume that it isn’t working.
3. The result is difficult to read
Google has chosen to give each overview a shade of color, in this example light green. Which disappears. This means that the AI overview is not very easy to read. And apart from the color, the whole thing looks a bit woolly.
4. You don’t have a human experience
Google indicated in its useful content update that human experience content is important. People come first when creating content and focusing on their content.
A bit silly, but it’s clear that the content of this AI overview has been compiled by AI and not by a person. No trace of experience, examples or humanity can be recognized…
5. No source reference
Also, one of the guidelines in Google’s useful content guidelines is the use of source references. I don’t see this. When I open ‘read more’ I see 3 hard-to-read blocks, but they are not sources, zero.
What I do see (under: ‘more options’) is:
This overview was created with the help of AI. It is supported by information from the Internet and Google’s Knowledge Graph, a collection of information about people, places, and things. Generative AI is experimental and the quality of the information may vary. For help evaluating the content, visit the links provided. Learn more about generative AI to learn more about data, privacy, and more.
6. Lack of authorship
This is also a very cool EEAT point, who created this content? Was it SEO guru Neil Patel on bounce rate or a fanatical intern? I usually find it quite nice to know who is the author of an article on a website. Well, content that has been mixed from various sources… doesn’t have a full author.
Example 2: What can I do on Efteling?
Another example: “What can you do on Efteling?”
I also get the same feeling from this example. A large area with few concrete answers, the blurring of the image doesn’t improve readability… And after reading the content of this AI overview, I don’t know much anymore.
IA’s response in the loose text below:
“The Efteling, a Dutch fairytale theme park, has many rides and attractions for all ages, including family rides, water shows and other attractions:
Dream Flight
An indoor family ride that takes you into a world of fairies, elves, trolls, unicorns, and forest animals
Pirana
A family rapids on a 360-meter course with water cannons and waterfalls”
What is ChatGPT doing about it?
I decide to ask ChatGPT the same question and only add the restriction ‘in 50 words’ (to compare well in this example). ChatGPT replies as follows:
“At Efteling, you can enjoy attractions such as the Python and Baron 1898, explore the Fairytale Forest, watch exciting shows, and eat delicious food. Efteling offers adventures for all ages with roller coasters, water attractions, and enchanting stories that come to life in a magical park.”
Wow… that’s already 100% more useful! If someone in America wants to know what you can do in Efteling, ChatGPT’s answer is much more useful!
What impact does the AI overview have on SEO?
From my tone, you’ll understand that I’m still not very enthusiastic about this new Google feature.
Initially, Google announced that it would appear in more than 50% of all search results… as I tested, this seems unlikely to me. Perhaps they’ve already reduced the number?
In my research, I tested approximately 200 searches and looked for questions where the AI overview would be very likely to appear. I arrived at a percentage of over 20%.
If the content and quality of these AI overviews don’t improve, I don’t think the impact of this new feature will be significantly great.
In any case, Google has just had 6 weeks of experience with this and there is a good chance that the content of this feature will be improved.
Impact on informational search intentions
If Google manages to improve the quality of these AI overviews, it could impact your SEO.
This mainly concerns informational search intentions.
It’s good to know that these are the types of sites where there’s a good chance that AI overviews will appear regularly.
Encyclopedic sites
Question and answer platforms
Educational and informational sites
Health and medical information sites
Online dictionaries and lexicons
Financial and investment sites
Lifestyle and do-it-yourself sites
Website listing and classification
How can you optimize your content for AI overviews?
If you have an online store or commercial website, I suspect you will lose little organic traffic.
But there are still some expert voices that still advise optimizing your content for AI use:
Mainly creating content questions that start with the words: how, what and why
Expanding your content with high-quality long-tail keywords with low search volumes
Conducting targeted keyword research for words where AI overviews appear more frequently
etc.
But: I wouldn’t do that. Because then you’re back to the old SEO (search engine optimization). It might be useful to revamp this term to, for example, PEO (People Experience Optimization), so that you don’t forget what it’s ultimately about.
There’s still plenty of room for SEO
I also regularly hear: “Is it still sensible to do SEO? Does it still work?
And, indeed, the percentage of organic traffic that Google still sends to websites has decreased (from around 45% to around 35% in the last 5 years). But we often forget that during the same period, the number of absolute searches on Google has grown even faster. Enough SEO space!
If you have an online store or consumer website, there is still enough SEO potential to continue getting organic traffic to your site. And the way it is now, the AI overview won’t have much impact on this more commercial organic search traffic.
For example, I don’t see Bol.com getting nervous any time soon about the possibility of a significant part of its 15 million monthly organic searches disappearing due to the arrival of the AI overview.
Lots of SEO opportunities with useful content
It’s important to know that you won’t achieve much anymore with the ‘old’ method of SEO (lots of content, lots of keywords, long texts, few links).
It’s all about unique useful content from an approach that prioritizes people.