Understanding and preparing for Google’s AI Overviews

We have collated a full guide to what started life as SGE (Search Generative Experience), now known as Google AI Overviews, and how to prepare for it. We expect AI Overviews to significantly impact Google’s organic search going forward. That’s why our innovation team are researching, testing, and acquiring as much data as possible. Read on and learn all about Google AI Overviews (SGE) and how to prepare your website.

There is an ongoing debate about how much SGE, now AI Overviews, will impact organic search clicks in Google search results. Google’s aim is to serve the right content to the right user in the most efficient and helpful manner. For some queries this may mean getting the answer you need with zero-clicks.

For instance, when a user is looking for local weather information, there is no need for them to click through to a site, they can get all the information they need from a snippet, AI overviews can offer a similar summary of an answer.

It is important to remember that AI Overviews giving a snippet of information is nothing new. Users will still need to click on a website to get the full depth of a topic. This could mean that site clicks go down due to users wanting a quick answer and not clicking through. However, it may mean that the users who do click through to the site have a higher search intent and are more likely to convert. 

Over the past year, several companies have been conducting research to see how the links referenced in AI Overviews results compare to the generic top 10 links that we see in Google search results. We have conducted research in-house and found that 55% of Google SGE results overlap with standard organic search results. 

As Google continues to experiment with this feature, the data is not consistent. However, it is interesting to see that even though the links in the AI Overview result may vary, often, the links below them are consistent with the top 10 on standard Google results.

AI Overviews references its sources of information, and you can see that it pulls information not only from generic websites but also from other platforms, such as LinkedIn. This is why it is vital that your full presence across the web is optimised to the fullest. 

If you would like a more in-depth understanding of how SGE/AI Overviews work and where they get their information, you can read our blog on How SGE Works. 

AI Overviews are not always correct. It has been found to pull incorrect information and display it to users as if it were correct. This is often referred to as hallucinations and is common within generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

Google has not published any official ranking factors for SGE/AI Overviews as of this writing. However, by collecting and analysing data on SGE and reading Google’s statements around AI Overview content, we can infer some clear factors that will impact your website’s ability to show up in the results. 

• • Google EEAT: These guidelines continue to be highly significant. It is important to display your depth of expertise and knowledge on a topic so that Google knows your content is reputable and relevant to users. You can take many actions here, such as writing strong author profiles on your website and linking to relevant studies. 
  • Quality Organic Content: Ensure you are writing high-quality, relevant content. Google has been clamping down on AI content this year, as content written purely by generative AI is often not high-quality or the most helpful for users. Google wants to reduce the amount of unoriginal, low-quality content available on the web. 
  • Multimedia: It is important to make sure you upload images and videos to your site and optimise them according to SEO best practices so that Google can understand their content and that they are high-quality for users. 
  • Structured Data: Schema markup is important to give Google signals about the purpose of your content and where it fits appropriately within user queries. Results pages use structured data for other SERP features, especially in organic shopping results, which tells us this will be important for AI Overviews. 

Resources to help  you improve your site for the above factors:

How to write and review content for EEAT signals

Image SEO Best Practices

Best practices for video SEO

Google’s introduction to structured data

It is also important to make sure it is easy for Google to crawl your website. If it is not easily crawlable, Google will not be able to understand your content and will then not know how to rank it for certain queries. This is where Technical SEO comes into play. Making sure your website code is optimised is very important as it enables Google to crawl your website and also ensures that users have a good experience when they are on your site. Issues like broken links and redirects can worsen user experience and Google will look upon this badly.

• Learn About Generative AI. This is a useful resource if you would like to hear an explanation of how it works directly from Google. 
• Early SGE impact. BrightEdge regularly conducts large studies on SGE queries. One of their SGE research reports was reported by Search Engine Journal. 
• Official Google AI. Stay up to date with the latest industry news and updates. 

Below, you can find more articles related to SGE/AI Overviews, which cover some of these topics in more detail. If you would like support optimising your strategy for AI search, get in touch with our innovation team.