Google’s AI Overviews: Here is what you need to know

Digital marketing professionals from all over the world have been keeping an eye on Google’s latest search feature. AI Overview was launched for US users in May 2024, and it should be available to over 1 billion people around the globe by the end of the year. Currently, AI Overview is only available to a small proportion of UK users, but wider access to the feature can be made available through the use of a VPN.

What exactly is AI Overview, and will it affect the traditional Google search results page (SERP) that we are used to? Is there anything that SEO professionals should be concerned about?

Here is what you need to know about AI Overview:

What is AI Overviews?

AI Overviews, previously known as Search Generative Experience (SGE), are an AI-generated feature that appears at the top of Google Search above search result listings. This means that Google now provides quick AI-generated answers for queries users ask. This process involves gathering and understanding information from various websites and providing a quick summary that would allow users to find the answers they are looking for without having to click in any of the top results on the page.

AI Overviews also allows users to ask more complex questions (see right), and therefore, get comprehensive answers, improving search experience.

Users can also ask follow-up questions:

While other AI models have been known to produce fabricated answers to queries, Google claims that AI overviews are unable to produce falsified answers because all the information it provides comes from relevant links that would appear in the SERPs.

They have also highlighted that on occasions when AI Overviews does produce an inaccurate answer, it is likely because it misinterpreted a query or does not have enough information available to provide an elaborate answer on that topic.

Will it affect search in the future?

It still might be too early to tell,, and whilst Google have addressed some of the major concerns about this new feature, there have been numerous questions raised that we are yet to have an answer to:

Decline in website traffic?

Some sources suggest that AI Overviews could lead to a decline of up to 60% in organic traffic. However, Google counters this, stating that featured links in these AI-generated summaries often receive a higher number of clicks.

Will SMEs be featured in AI overviews?

Marketers are debating how this change will affect small businesses, and if they would ever be featured on the AI Overviews summaries.

Impact on YMYL queries?

YMYL (Your Money Your Life) problems are another area of concern raised by users. Will AI Overviews allow users to ask questions that will impact directly on their day-to-day lives such as financial and medical advice?

Credit & ownership concerns?

It is uncertain who the ownership of the summary created by AI Overviews be attributed to, and there are concerns on whether Google will be referencing it correctly.

As SEO professionals, we need to make sure that we are ahead of the game, so while we can test, analyse, and adapt as this feature is rolled out to hopefully find an answer for some of the above queries, we need to ensure we remain flexible with our strategies, to account for all the potential changes in the future of search.

Ways to stay relevant

Even though the full impact isn’t clear yet, placing a focus on optimising for AI Overviews could help minimise the loss of traffic to your website. SEO has become a crucial factor of digital marketing, so it is vital that we take action to prevent our sites from suffering from potential AI Overviews impacts.

Content quality and relevance

Great content that answers users’ queries can make a significant difference in your website’s visibility. High quality, shareable content is also much more likely to be cited, further expanding the potential reach.
At Click we have an abundance of expertise on how user focused content (UFC) can be used to positively impact your website.

EEAT

EEAT is a framework used by Google to assess the quality of digital content, and stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. By following these guidelines, websites should be creating helpful and reliable information, primarily created to benefit people, and not search engines.

Optimising for featured snippets

The importance of optimising content for Google’s featured snippets has increased significantly since the introduction ofAI Overviews. Featured snippets are short sections of text taken directly from a webpage that provide clear answers to a search query.
Like with featured snippets, AI Overviews seems to prefer content that’s optimised for traditional SERPs. This means following SEO best practices still apply, including:

• Technical SEO
• Local SEO
• Keyword research

Pages that are already ranking in the regular SERPs, or those that are currently displaying as featured snippets are the most likely to appear on the AI Overviews feature.

Summary & final remarks

AI overviews can help users save time and provide them with a more efficient search experience. They can also turn complex topics into an easy-to-understand format while still providing relevant recommended links in the SERPs.
However, while creating a more seamless and user-friendly experience, they could also have their downfalls, potentially leading to less website traffic, loss in ad revenue, impact the search visibility of small businesses, and more!

Studies conducted since the launch of AI Overviews found that these snippets only appear for 15% of queries; this is already down from 84% earlier in the year. These studies have also shown that AI Overviews also tend to appear more often depending on the sector or industry the query is targeted at; for instance, AI overviews appear in as many as 63% of healthcare-related queries, but in less than 1% of queries related to restaurants.

It is important to remember that we are still in the early stages of AI Overviews, and the feature is still not largely available in UK SERPs. For now, our best approach is to keep an eye out for any future updates on AI Overviews and continue our usual SEO efforts.