Google AI Overviews: Your Ultimate Guide!

 Transcript:

So about a week ago, Google released the new experience on search called AI overviews. And although the theory and on paper is very exciting, I want to talk to you about some of the things that I think are going to impact how consumers search for your products and your services and how these new features really impact SEO, especially at the local level.

Now, when I looked at Google IO announcement, it was very promising. But then a few days later, people are hating and deactivating the feature. So in this video, I want to talk to you about my opinion, what I think it’s going on, with Google AI overviews, where I see them going and really, how is it going to impact our industry?

All right, let’s talk about it. So

to give you a little bit of context, first time experience using it on a daily basis for the last 12 months, and that was known as SGE, Google Search Generative Experience. Now that’s a very complicated name in my opinion. So. Kind of makes sense why they renamed it AI overviews. AI overviews is really a brief summary of an answer to a query, to a question or to a search.

Now on paper, that sounds great, right? Basically Google doing the Googling for you. You ask a question and you get an answer very, very quickly without having to browse through a bunch of articles and put it, putting together all the information by yourself. Now, as a consumer, that’s great. As a marketer as an seo or as a leader in in your organization That’s kind of scary because basically google is learning from your information from your data and giving it on displaying it on search results which means technically They, the user has the answer, so they don’t have to go to your website.

And this obviously has pros and cons in my opinion. I mean, yes, AI overview will allow the user to respond to more complicated questions. Let’s say for example, in the automotive industry, let’s say that I am in the market for a new SUV. So instead of spending hours on research and YouTube videos on reviews on what to buy, I can just type in what is the best luxury SUV for three kits with good MPG.

Now this is a very complex question, right? And in Google event, they basically broke it down into how machine learning is behind all this. Gemini is the platform that is powering these AI overviews. And I don’t want to get too technical, but basically Google breaks down your question and is able to absorb a lot of information to answer it very, very quickly.

Now, If you have a blog post that probably gave a good answer on your website, well, Google now has that same information and can display it to the user without sending traffic to your website, which means, you know, your traffic might see some conversion drops, but this is where it gets very interesting.

Again, I’ve been using it for 12 months as SGE and, and mainly just for experiments, right? Like I really wanted to understand how this AI is going to incorporate into search, but as a consumer, very quickly, my mind learned how to ignore it. So every time I would search, and I would get the SGE answer from AI, I would immediately skip it, right?

I would go to my usual Google map pack, or my search results, and continue my normal use. Now, with new branding, new name, fancy looking graphics, of course, right after the Google I. O. event, I went onto Google, for the next 24 hours, I was typing every single search I could think of, most of the time, I was getting an AI overview response.

Now, it’s been a week of that. And now I’m having such a hard time to replicate those AI overviews. I don’t know if all the negative press and negative feedback on the, on the talks on the street is causing them to slowly retract some of it because the day after the IO, I was basically getting an AI overview, nine out of 10 searches.

Almost all of them had them. As of today, one week later, I’m struggling both on desktop and mobile. I mean, out of 20, I’ve got one AI overview and that was Google’s recommendation on how to trigger it. No, I’m not saying Google is going to pull it out. I think this technology will continue to evolve and consumer searches are going to have to evolve.

There’s going to be some behavioral changes. I think there’s going to be some SEO strategic changes that you’re going to have to do to your strategy. How content is created, what content or what type of content you are targeting and creating. But all in all. Google is investing heavily on this. We know they’re behind compared to chat, GPT and Microsoft technology.

We know they need to catch up and so that they don’t lose any market share. So we know that I don’t see Google AI overviews. I don’t think they’re going to go away. I think they’re going to have to invest heavily. I think they’re going to have to evolve to make it much, much better preposition. Now I say that again, pros and cons as a consumer, that’s a good thing.

It’s. As a marketer, that may be threatening because technically is borrowing and learning from your content, from your information, and then just giving the answer to the user. So for the next several weeks, I’m going to continue testing it. I want to keep you updated on how search is going to evolve, how to adapt your SEO strategy.

So we’ll get into more of those details on a future video. But for this specific episode, I wanted to. Let you know what’s coming. What’s changing. I mean, this has the potential to disrupt how people search, how they consume content, how they’re answering their complicated questions, which you may have to adjust your search strategy, your marketing strategy.

How are you bringing in inbound traffic from search engines and whatnot? Personally, I think the SEO industry and all things search marketing is ever evolving, right? It’s never stopping. We’ve had so many updates. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I love it so much. It keeps me on my toes, never boring with that.

I hope you liked this video. I hope you found it useful. Let me know in the comments, how you’re preparing your strategy. What are you planning to do to adjust for this AI overviews? Or if you’re just completely, you know, one of those users who turned it off after a bad experience or a bad answer from AI overviews.

Hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, and we’ll see you on another video. Bye bye.