How AI overviews impact organic traffic (former Google SGE)

What are AI overviews, and how will it impact organic traffic? While there’s no definite answer yet, Curamando’s SEO specialist, Nicole Godor, lays out the hard facts and gives us a glimpse of what lies ahead and how you should adapt to stay ahead of the curve.

The information in this article is subject to change as AIO develops.

By: Nicole Godor on March 15, 2024 | Updated on October 11, 2024 | Reading time: 5 minutes

Google’s launch of the AI overviews (AIO) marks the start of a new era in search. This article provides an overview of the current knowledge we, the SEO expert team at Curamando, have acquired surrounding generative AI in Google’s search results. The content is based on the most recent official information.

What are Google SGE and AI overviews? 

In May 2023, Google announced and opened up the Search Generative Experience (SGE) experiment in Search Labs. One year later, Google announced that SGE would become AI overviews (AIO), and officially launched AIO for users in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil, gradually making it available to more countries and languages.

The AI overview aims to enhance the search experience with generative AI. Unlike similar AI tools, this experience is integrated into the search result page and allows you to explore topics in-depth faster.

How do I access AI overviews?

If you do not reside in one of the official markets where AIO has been launched, it is possible to access the experiment in Google Search Labs which is currently available in seven languages and a total of 120 countries. Formerly known as “SGE, generative AI”, the official experiment name is “AI overviews and more”. If the experiment is not available in your country, you can access it by using a VPN.

How AI overviews works

When searching on Google, you may see an AI-generated overview at the top of the search engine result page (SERP), including paragraphs, links, and images generated from different sources. The overview will be automatically generated for certain queries and appear folded, asking a user to click on “show more” to view the full content. As of today, the visual appearance of the AI overview remains the same no matter the search query. However, the information could be provided in different structures depending on the result. This could be subject to change due to previous iterations of the experiment where different queries resulted in different colors in the overview.

During our testing, we found that the AI overview was shown to a higher degree during informational search queries as compared to navigational or transactional queries.

Screenshot of an AI overview in Google’s SERP.

Where does AI overview collect information?

When analyzing the AI-generated results, we found that AI overviews create and serve unique answers without any overlap with the standard search results, this is also found from learnings on different websites. The overlap refers to the comparison of the content inside the overview compared to the standard search results page.

This is something we will explore more in-depth going forward.

To what extent will AI overview impact organic traffic?

We believe that the organic traffic could be impacted to different extents by various factors. Let us examine two scenarios.

 Scenario 1: Currently the overview generation requires user interaction. Your organic traffic could be affected, or not, depending on whether the users choose to utilize the overview.

 Scenario 2: If the overview does not generate for a certain query, you will likely see no impact on your organic traffic, as the SERP will remain unchanged.

How do I optimize my website to appear in the AI overview?

The answer to this question is what we are all searching for, and at this stage, we can only make assumptions. We believe that various optimization techniques could be necessary, depending on the factors mentioned in the previous answer. Experimenting and analyzing the AI-generated results for different search queries relevant to your business could provide you valuable insights and guide you on potential techniques to incorporate into your SEO strategy. 

For instance, if you aim for your website’s recipes to be featured in the AI-generated results, it would likely be strategic to start testing relevant searches and analyzing what is included in the AI-generated results. For example, incorporating user reviews could be beneficial if they are consistently associated with recipe results.

Summary and next steps

As AI overview has officially launched in a few markets and is in an expanding state, the time has come to experiment, analyze, and monitor what is included in the overview and how it is being generated. With a deeper understanding, you can apply possible techniques to your SEO strategy that enable your website’s content to appear in the AI overview. By staying up to date with the latest developments and case studies you could maintain a competitive edge in organic search.

 If you are interested in a workshop, discuss this further, or if you have any questions regarding AI overview and how it might impact your organic traffic, please contact us.

About the author

Nicole Godor is a Senior SEO Consultant at Curamando. She is a part of the SEO and Content team, working with technical SEO, content and external factors. She has experience working within both B2C and B2B sectors across various industries.