What is your opinion on the impact of Google’s new “AI Overview” on SEO? Do they improve a users search experience? Or do they make it worse? Many in the SEO field would say the latter.
Even in their current, inaccurate and sometimes laughable state, it’s clear AI is here to stay. Google’s Search Generative Experience, now “AI Overviews” are here to stay. So with that, here is what 8 thought leaders have to say about this new feature’s impact on SEO:
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Adjust Content Strategy for AI Summaries
Content must now be optimised not only for traditional search algorithms but also to fit the criteria of AI overviews, which prioritise succinct, authoritative summaries of topics.
This could mean adjustments in content strategy, focusing more on depth and quality to ensure visibility in this new format. Moreover, the potential reduction in direct page visits due to these summaries could challenge existing models of online engagement and monetisation.
Anna Matviienko
SEO Consultant, Anna Matviienko
I agree with Anna here. AI Overviews may well become another SERP feature that SEOs can look to target.
AI Overviews: SEO Chaos and Opportunity
Google has two primary aims with its AI Overview initiative: to ride the AI wave for competitive advantage in the market while ensuring relevance, and to retain users on its platform while reducing clicks to original content producers.
While AI Overview excels at addressing informational queries, it falls short in navigating and transactional queries. Moreover, user behaviour indicates a skepticism towards simplistic outputs from AI tools; users often seek to verify information from original sources. Surprisingly, the release of Google’s AI Overview hasn’t notably impacted publishers’ click-through rates (CTR).
The search engine landscape is evolving from Google’s monopoly to a diverse ecosystem with multiple players. While Google will remain prominent, ChatGPT won’t supplant it entirely; each platform will cater to its distinct user base. This transition heralds both chaos and opportunity for SEO professionals, who must navigate these changes to provide effective solutions.
Mahendra Choudhary
Co-Founder, GrowthSRC
Chaos and opportunity indeed. Many feel Google rushed out their AI Overiew feature, given how incorrect some of the results have been. However, I doubt Google is just going to drop this update. Once it has been refined, there’ll be an SEO opportunity.
Focus SEO on Commercial Terms and Credibility
Since AI-generated content overviews will likely target long-tail informational keywords, websites can expect a decline in traffic for these types of queries. SEO strategies will need to focus more on middle-of-the-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel commercial terms.
This means placing even more emphasis on website credibility, reputation, online mentions, customer reviews, and creating content that fully satisfies search intent while demonstrating expertise and credibility.
In my opinion, companies will still need to create blogs to support commercial pages, direct relevant contextual internal links to them, and showcase their expertise in their industry. AI-generated overviews are currently very prone to displaying inaccurate and even harmful data, so people will still seek out legitimate websites for information. Therefore, producing accurate and up-to-date content is even more important.
Sonja Marinkovic
SEO Consultant, Digital Search Hero
Sonja and many others on social media have pointed out the fact that AI Overviews could very well take away traffic from websites. Early results show this may be less pronounced than expected. But then again, it is early days. If AI Overviews truly aggregate all informational queries, that could lead to a significant shift in traffic for some websites. I also absolutely agree that focusing on credibility and reputation is now more emphasised.
Google’s AI Overviews May Increase Zero-Clicks
AI Overviews represent the latest evolution of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) initiative. While still in its early stages, SGE’s use of AI language models could lead to a rise in “zero-click” searches, where users get their questions answered without ever leaving Google.
The outputs often lack critical details, demonstrate incomplete understanding, or fail to cover important nuances and edge cases related to complex topics. There are also well-known issues with hallucinations and inconsistencies in AI language model outputs.
Although AI-generated content overviews could potentially improve some search experiences and continue the march towards more zero-click results, the technology still appears to be a long way from providing authoritatively accurate and complete information across all search queries.
Founder, Oliver.com
James Oliver
Founder, Oliver.com
I think James nails it here. Zero-click searches would be the end game of AI Overviews if they truly can be a good experience that users trust. For now, it’s the opposite.
AI Answers Impact Low-Intent Search Traffic
While AI-generated content overviews will have an impact on search traffic for many websites that were ranking for competing terms, my opinion is that this will have much less of an effect on actual conversions. The AI-generated answers are typically answering questions from people who have little to no buying intent. The searches where a person is ready to make a buying decision aren’t typically able to be answered with a quick AI answer.Founder, Serpple
Adam White
Founder, Serpple
Adam makes a great point. IF AI Overviews don’t trigger on high purchase intent searches and mostly keywords with informational intent, then the impact will not be felt as much. It may also make transactional keywords far more sought after.
AI-Enhanced Snapshots Benefit E-Commerce SEO
I think Google’s new way of integrating AI-generated content overviews into search results is transforming how users find information. This shift means that potential customers can quickly locate the products or services they need, enhancing the user experience (UX) and shortening the customer journey by presenting the most relevant search results tailored to their queries.
From my perspective, Google’s use of AI in search isn’t going to eliminate the need for SEO in the near or even long-term future. Instead, AI-enhanced snapshots can be beneficial for SEO efforts as they ensure more precise search queries. This leads to higher-quality traffic for e-commerce sites, enabling customers to make more informed purchasing decisions. Consequently, this can decrease bounce rates and boost conversion rates.
The important aspect here is staying well-informed and adapting to Google’s evolving standards to make the most of these changes.
Precious Abacan
Marketing Director, Softlist
I agree with Precious here, especially on the point that AI will not eliminate SEO. If the AI feature in Google is just another discovery mechanism, then I foresee SEOs leveraging that.
AI Summaries Could Divert Traffic from Publishers
Honestly, I think the advent of AI-generated content summaries in Google search could significantly impact online publishers by potentially diverting users away from their websites directly to Google’s results. This shift could fundamentally reshape the online landscape, posing challenges for content creators who depend on website traffic to generate ad revenue.
There’s a lot of concern in our industry about whether this marks the beginning of the end for link-based searches and how it might change user behaviour. We’re also apprehensive about the implications for those who rely on site traffic as a primary source of income. As Google continues to roll out these AI-driven features, there’s a real worry about the future of user engagement and click-through rates.
I believe that Google needs to find a balance. They should leverage AI to enhance and expedite search experiences while ensuring that users still have compelling reasons to click through to actual websites and engage with the content we produce. Those of us in the publishing and advertising industries are particularly concerned, as our livelihoods are closely tied to site traffic. We’ll be keeping a close eye on these developments.
Patrick Beltran
Marketing Director, Ardoz Digital
Patrick raises many valid concerns both SEO and business owners have. Google’s updates have already destroyed many businesses this year. People are understandably very skeptical of the new AI Overview feature. There is no trust yet.
AI Content Overviews: Potential SEO Meme?
I believe these are, in their current existence, slowly turning into a meme with how inaccurate they are. SEOs have always been great at figuring out how to “game the system,” so I believe it’s going to be a good year or two before these AI content overviews become reliable sources of information—if they ever do. I also believe Google will attempt to leverage them into some type of new advertising opportunity as well.
A meme they are! Just check X, it’s full of examples where these AI Overviews are laughably wrong. And yeh, I’m sure Google will squeeze ads into the mix somewhere. There have already been a few reports of ads triggering within AI Overviews.
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