Tag Archive for: AI overviews

Google Says To Optimize For Humans, Not For AI

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Since AI overviews have taken over search results and reduced the amount of clicks going to traditional search results, a debate has emerged within the SEO community. While one half of the community insists that the rise of AI calls for an entirely new approach to website optimization, others have cautioned that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. 

Now, two leading figures from Google have chimed in with a lengthy discussion on AI, how it is impacting search, and whether you need to be doing anything new to improve your visibility in AI overviews. 

Do You Need To Be Doing Anything New To Optimize For AI Search?

In a recent episode of the Search Off The Record podcast, Google’s Danny Sullivan and John Mueller spoke about AI and how it has changed search (and how it hasn’t). While they concede that it feels like search has changed significantly over the past couple years, the rise of artificial intelligence in search doesn’t actually call for any changes to how you optimize your website. 

Instead, they say that AI overviews use many of the same signals that were being used by the search engine.

To start the discussion, Jonn Mueller asked:

“So everything kind of around AI, or is this really a new thing? It feels like these fads come and go. Is AI in fad? How do you think?”

To which, Danny Sullivan said:

“Oh gosh, my favorite thing is that we should be calling it LMNOPEO because there’s just so many acronyms for it. It’s GEO for generative engine optimization or AEO for answer engine optimization and AIEO. I don’t know. There’s so many different names for it.

I used to write about SEO and search. I did that for like 20 years. And part of me is just so relieved. I don’t have to do that aspect of it anymore to try to keep up with everything that people are wondering about.

And on the other hand, you still have to kind of keep up on it because we still try to explain to people what’s going on. And I think the good news is like, There’s not a lot you actually really need to be worrying about.

It’s understandable. I think people keep having these questions, right? I mean, you see search formats changing, you see all sorts of things happening and you wonder, well, is there something new I should be doing? Totally get that.

And remember, we, John and I and others, we all came together because we had this blog post we did in May, which we’ll drop a link to or we’ll point you to somehow to it, but it was… we were getting asked again and again, well, what should we be doing? What should we be thinking about?

And we all put our heads together and we talked with the engineers and everything else. So we came up with nothing really that different.”

Google’s Systems Prioritize The Best Content For Humans

According to Danny Sullivan, the reason you don’t need new strategies to optimize for overviews is that Google’s AI systems aim to surface the best content for human users – the same as Google’s traditional search systems. 

As Sullivan explained:

“And when it comes to all of our ranking systems, it’s about how are we trying to reward content that we think is great for people, that it was written for human beings in mind, not written for search algorithms, not written for LLMs, not written for LMNO, PEO, whatever you want to call it.

It’s that everything we do and all the things that we tailor and all the things that we try to improve, it’s all about how do we reward content that human beings find satisfying and say, that was what I was looking for, that’s what I needed. So if all of our systems are lining up with that, it’s that thing about you’re going to be ahead of it if you’re already doing that.

To whereas the more you’re trying to… Optimize or GEO or whatever you think it is for a specific kind of system, the more you’re potentially going to get away from the main goal, especially if those systems improve and get better, then you’re kind of having to shift and play a lot of catch up.

So, you know, we’re going to talk about some of that stuff here with the big caveat, we’re only talking about Google, right? That’s who we work for. So we don’t say what, anybody else’s AI search, chat search, whatever you want to kind of deal with and kind of go with it from there. But we’ll talk about how we look at things and how it works.”

Optimizing For Humans Is The Key To Google Success

While Sullivan’s comments are limited to Google’s own AI systems, they make it clear that optimizing for anything or anyone other than the end user is a mistake. Instead, it is crucial to do everything possible to deliver the best content and most value for real human visitors to your site. 

This makes sense in the big scheme of things. Ultimately, Google’s goal is to provide the best experience for real human users and delivering websites optimized primarily for artificial systems isn’t likely to win over many users. If you keep your goals aligned with providing the most value and best experience for human users, you’re better positioned to be the type of site Google wants to highlight. 

For more from Danny Sullivan’s discussion with John Mueller, listen to the full Search Off The Record episode here.

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New Research Shows SEO Is Key For Appearing In AI Overviews

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Based on an analysis of over 25,000 user searches, websites that rank at the top of Google’s traditional search results appeared in AI search answers at least 25% of the time. 

This means that even in the era of increasing zero-click searches and decreasing clicks to search listings, SEO remains a crucial marketing strategy for brands looking to improve their online presence and reach more customers. 

The Study

The findings come from Tomasz Rudzki, co-founder of ZipTie. In an attempt to determine if SEO was losing relevance in the AI age, Rudzki assessed searches from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI overviews. 

What Rudzki saw was clear – sites that rank at the top of Google search results had 1-in-4 odds of being highlighted in AI overviews. The lower the sites were ranked, the lower their chances were of being included in AI responses. 

As Rudzki put it: 

“The higher you rank in Google’s top 10, the more likely you are to appear in AI search results across platforms. This isn’t speculation – it’s based on real queries from real users.”

While this is particularly of interest for Google, Rudzki said this pattern was consistent across all AI search platforms he evaluated, including ChatGPT. 

How AI Search Engines Work

In his report, Rudzki uses information from Google to detail how AI search engines work. 

Pre-selection: In the first step, AI systems select the pages they believe are the most relevant for a query. In most cases, this includes the highest-ranking pages for similar searches. 

Content extraction: Next, AI tools parse the context of the selected pages and pull content directly related to the question it is answering. 

AI synthesis: AI systems finally aggregate the information they have collected from across the web and package them in one easy-to-read response. 

In the process of finding the most relevant and accurate information for a specific question, AI tools heavily favor the sites that are already favored by Google, just as most humans naturally favor the highest ranked sites in organic search results. 

Why AI Sometimes Pulls From Lower-Ranked Sites

When exploring why AI tools sometimes pull information from pages that rank lower, sometimes even falling below the top 10 search results, Rudzki provided a few potential answers. 

The first is search personalization. While a specific site may not typically be included at the top of the search results, there is a chance of it appearing higher in personalized search results. 

The second, and perhaps more notable, reason is a concept called “query fan-out”. 

Google’s AI documentation explains query fan-out like this:

“Both AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a ‘query fan-out‘ technique — issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources — to develop a response.”

In other words, when you ask AI a specific question, it may run several processes to ask questions about specific details of your question or related information. This means that while a selected page may not rank well for your specific question, it may rank well for a particular aspect that the AI system looked into. 

SEO is Here To Stay

There is no arguing that AI tools are drastically changing how we search and access information. While AI overviews are tied to decreasing click-through rates on organic results, brands can still gain ground by positioning themselves as an authority that Google can rely on to provide accurate information. This not only helps mitigate lost traffic from zero-click searches, but can also improve your reputation and connect you with new potential customers.

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Google Executives Say Falling Referral Traffic Are Sign Of Higher-Quality Clicks

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Critics accuse Google’s increasing use of AI in its search engine of taking referral traffic away from websites, but Google’s executives say the issue is a matter of quality versus quantity. 

In a recent press and Q&A event, Google’s executives argued that AI is improving the quality of search results (while largely avoiding the issue of decreasing clicks).

The session included statements from several executives, such as Jenny Cheng (Vice President and General Manager of Google’s Merchant Shopping operations), Sean Downey (President of Americas & Global Partners at Google), and Nicky Rettke (YouTube Vice President of Product Management).

Does AI Reduce Traffic To Websites?

Numerous studies have found that Google’s AI overviews have significantly reduced click-through rates to both organic and paid listings, leading to significant reductions in referral traffic. The trend has brought down CTRs for nearly every type of search, but non-branded informational searchers have been most heavily impacted since the introduction of AI overviews. 

Ahrefs, Advanced Web Ranking, Similarweb, and many others have independently verified that this trend is happening and seems to be getting worse as Google has increased how frequently it shows AI overviews. 

What Google’s Execs Have To Say

When asked about falling click-through rates in search, Google’s executives began by saying it is partially driven by an increase in follow-up searches while using AI-enhanced search. 

“What we’re seeing is people asking more questions. So they’ll ask a first question, they’ll get information, and then go and ask a different question. So they’re refining and getting more information, and then they’re making a decision of what website to go to.”

As this happens, Google seems to believe users refine exactly what they are looking for, ensuring that their clicks are more valuable. 

“When they get to a decision to click out, it’s a more highly qualified click… What we hope to see over time—and we don’t have any data to share on this—is more time spent on site, which is what we see organically in a much more highly qualified visitor for the website.”

Notably, even Google admits it cannot back up these claims with data. 

What About Ads?

While the Google executives did their best not to directly address falling referral traffic for organic content, they did claim that CTRs on ad placements are stable overall. Despite AI overviews pushing paid placements further down the page, Google says clicks remain largely unchanged. 

“When we run ads on AI overviews versus ads on standard search, we see pretty much the same level of monetization capabilities, which would indicate most factors are the same and they’re producing really the same results for advertisers to date.”

Again, however, the company declined to share any data on the issue. 

What About AI Mode?

Don’t expect anything to improve with the new wide launch of Google’s AI mode. Along with doubling down on AI features in search, this new mode, Google has made referral traffic from AI mode untrackable. 

When someone clicks through to your website from within AI mode, it is currently not being recorded in Google Search Console analytics. At best, some tools seem to be capturing when clicks occur, however, they are shown with no attribution. In most cases, however, they seem not to be registering at all. This will only serve to muddy the waters while websites deal with seeing less traffic from Google.

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AI Overviews Are Coming To YouTube In New Test

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Google is bringing its AI overviews to its sister platform, YouTube. 

In an announcement, the company said it was testing showing AI overviews similar to those already seen in Google search results. These overviews will choose the most relevant clips from videos it believes are relevant to a search.

How Will This Impact YouTube Click-Through Rates

Despite seemingly trying to avoid the issue during a recent earnings call, Google can’t hide that its AI overviews are reducing click-through rates in search results and sending less traffic to other websites. 

With this in mind, it is reasonable to be concerned that YouTube is similarly pulling users away from fully watching videos from creators in a way that may reduce viewership and revenue to content creators.

What To Expect From YouTube AI Overviews

For the current test, only a small group of U.S. YouTube premium features will be eligible to see AI overviews for English-language search results. 

When searching, these users will be shown a collection of relevant videos and highlighted clips that it believes are most relevant. The clips will be shown in a carousel within the search results, letting users quickly browse the selection. 

For now, YouTube is using AI overviews on two specific types of searches:

  • Product research (such as users looking for info about the best noise-cancelling headphones)
  • Travel and local discovery (for example, when users search for information about museums to visit in a specific city)

Throughout the test, YouTube says it will be collecting user feedback which it will use to determine whether to expand this feature to more users. 

For more, you can read the announcement for AI overviews on YouTube here.

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