Google's AI Overview is an innovative feature that leverages artificial intelligence to provide contextual answers to complex questions. This aims to offer more defined answers, bringing fresh opinions and angles to existing queries. AI Overview (formerly Generative Search) is designed to enhance the user experience by organizing search results in a new way, enabling users to get more from a single search. In this article, we will delve into the workings of AI Overview, its impact on the user experience, and how you can prepare for this evolution in search technology.

How Does AI Overview Impact User Experience?

AI Overview significantly enhances the user experience by allowing users to:

  • Ask complex, descriptive questions and receive comprehensive answers.
  • Quickly grasp a general sense of a topic with links to relevant results for deeper exploration.
  • Kickstart tasks like drafting content or generating images promptly.
  • Efficiently progress in information gathering through conversational follow-ups and suggested next steps.

These features aim to make search more efficient and user-friendly, transforming how information is accessed and utilized.

AI-Powered Overviews

AI Overview provides AI-powered snapshots that give users a quick overview of a topic, with links to further information. These snapshots act as springboards for users to explore a wide range of content and perspectives, offering links to sources that support or expand upon the information presented. This allows users to discover a wider range of content from publishers, businesses, charities, and more, facilitating a more comprehensive understanding and quicker task progression.

Easier Follow-Up Questions

AI Overview enables users to refine their searches with follow-up questions, allowing them to explore new directions without starting over. This feature is particularly useful for complex or evolving information journeys. The AI understands the context from previous questions and reformulates queries to better reflect user intent, dynamically changing web links throughout the conversation for easy exploration of relevant content.

Vertical Experiences

Generative AI enhances informational queries related to specific verticals, such as location-specific searches. In shopping, for example, generative AI can help uncover key considerations and product information, making purchase decisions faster and easier. For product searches, generative AI creates snapshots of noteworthy factors to consider and a range of product options. It may also provide reviews, prices, product images, and further relevant data.

This up-to-date product information is possible because AI Overview is built on Google’s Shopping Graph, the world’s most comprehensive dataset of constantly changing products, sellers, brands, reviews, and inventory.

Search Ads

Search ads will continue to play a critical role as AI Overview progresses. They serve as additional sources of useful information while helping users discover millions of businesses online. In this new experience, advertisers will still have the opportunity to reach potential customers along their search journeys. Google is committed to transparency, ensuring that ads remain distinguishable from organic search results with clear and transparent ad labels.

Creativity and Productivity

AI Overview’s AI capabilities can help users continue their journeys in more creative ways, going beyond just finding information to making use of it. These capabilities have applications in tasks requiring creativity, such as drafting content or generating images. Initially, there are constraints on creative uses, with an emphasis on safety and quality, but Google plans to expand these capabilities over time.

Image Generation

AI Overview introduces the ability to create images using generative AI. Users can ask for specific images, such as "draw a picture of a capybara wearing a chef’s hat and cooking breakfast," and receive generated images. This feature is currently available only to users opted into the AI Overview experiment, who are 18 years or older, and in English in the U.S.

New AI-Powered Search Features

In addition to AI Overview, Google is rolling out several new AI-powered features to enhance the search experience:

Adjusting AI Overviews

Users will soon be able to adjust the AI Overviews to either "simplify the language" or "break it down in more detail." Clicking on "Simpler" will give users a more basic response, while "Break it down" will provide a much more detailed response. This feature will be available in Search Labs for English-language queries in the U.S.

Multistep Reasoning Capability

Google Search can now provide multistep reasoning using Gemini's step-by-step reasoning logic. This allows users to ask complex questions with multiple nuances and receive comprehensive answers in one go. For example, users can search for "find the best yoga or pilates studios in Boston and show details on their intro offers and walking time from Beacon Hill." This capability will soon be available in Search Labs for English queries in the U.S.

Planning Capabilities

The planning capabilities feature allows users to plan tasks directly in Google Search, such as creating a meal plan or organizing a trip. Users can co-create plans with others, swap out specific details, and export plans to Google Docs or Gmail. This feature will be available in Search Labs later this year for English-language queries in the U.S.

AI-Organized Search Results

Google Search will use AI to group search results into specific categories, helping users brainstorm options for their queries. Results will be categorized under unique, AI-generated headlines, featuring a wide range of perspectives and content types. This functionality will roll out for dining and recipes, followed by movies, music, books, hotels, shopping, and more later this year for U.S. English results.

Lens Search with Video

Lens search with video enables users to record a video and ask questions while recording. Google will respond based on the questions asked, taking visual search to a new level. This feature will be available in Search Labs.

User Experience

Google has evolved the Search user interface (UI) to be more useful and accessible. The AI-powered snapshot has easy-to-access resources and recognizable UI for links, allowing users to further explore across both desktop and mobile. Google is also helping users transition to conversational follow-ups through thoughtfully crafted callouts and highlighted states.

The Current Landscape and Concerns

As Google continues to develop and roll out AI Overview, concerns are mounting among content creators and publishers who rely heavily on search traffic.

AI Overview answers, which often paraphrase content directly from websites, push traditional links further down, making them less visible. This shift is causing anxiety among content creators, who worry about losing their audience and revenue.

The Financial Impact

The potential financial impact of AI Overview is significant. Tech research firm Gartner predicts that web traffic from search engines will fall by 25 percent by 2026 due to these changes. Ross Hudgens, CEO of search engine optimization consultancy Siege Media, estimates that some publishers could see a 10 to 20 percent drop in traffic, with some experiencing even greater losses.

Raptive, a company providing digital media, audience, and advertising services to about 5,000 websites, estimates that the changes could result in about $2 billion in losses for creators. Some websites might lose up to two-thirds of their traffic. These predictions highlight the urgency for content creators to adapt to the new search landscape.

Google’s Approach

Google insists that it is rolling out AI Overview in a “measured” way, prioritizing traffic to websites and merchants. During a recent earnings call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized the company’s commitment to maintaining a healthy web ecosystem. However, the transition to AI-generated answers remains a point of contention, with many stakeholders worried about its long-term implications.

How to Prepare for AI Overview

Short-Term Preparations

  • Use proper markup schema on text, image, and video content to ensure it appears in relevant AI responses.
  • Include citations/links to original sources.
  • Prioritize reputation management and build a good online reputation with positive user engagement.
  • Ensure all owned properties are accurate and up to date, such as Google Business Profiles and your website.
  • Ensure your site is technically healthy, with good website speed, mobile friendliness, good UX, and Core Web Vitals.
  • Add image extensions to ads and test Performance Max campaigns and shopping feeds if relevant.
  • Create strong product copy including features and benefits, ensuring this content is unique.
  • Provide straightforward answers to common queries at the start of the piece.
  • Offer detailed FAQs and in-depth content.
  • Consider repurposing existing popular content into non-organic search assets such as podcasts, YouTube videos, whitepapers, and infographics.

Long-Term Preparations

  • Expect a shift towards more long-tail and conversational keywords and optimize for these.
  • Aim for a diversity of content types to improve visibility and create in-depth content including internal links.
  • Create helpful content that satisfies or exceeds E-E-A-T.
  • Provide content that offers unique experiences and reflects human perspectives, using first-person experiences where possible.
  • Diversify your traffic to prepare for a potential loss of organic search traffic with zero-click answers.
  • Experiment with AI Overview. Test existing AI-powered search engines and assistants with your brand name, products, and top questions from your customers. Optimize your online presence based on the results.

The Future of AI Overview

While we cannot predict the future of AI Overview with certainty, the following evolutions are likely within the SEO community:

  • Enhanced personalization: As algorithms improve, search engines will better understand individual

preferences, providing users with highly tailored content and search results.

  • Voice search: Voice search is gaining prominence, and AI Overview will adapt to this trend. Content marketers will need to optimize content for voice queries, which often have a conversational tone and longer queries.
  • Visual search: Visual search capabilities are evolving. AI Overview will likely incorporate visual recognition technology, allowing users to search for information by uploading images or using their device’s camera.

Current Known Limitations

Despite the advancements, there are known limitations of both large language models (LLMs) and AI Overview in its initial, experimental form:

  • Misinterpretation during corroboration: AI Overview may appropriately identify information to corroborate its snapshot, but slight misinterpretations of language can change the meaning of the output.
  • Hallucination: Like all LLM-based experiences, AI Overview may sometimes misrepresent facts or inaccurately identify insights.
  • Bias: The data that AI Overview is trained on can exhibit narrow representations or potentially negative contextual associations. Google is committed to combating bias but acknowledges that more work is needed.
  • Opinionated content implying persona: AI Overview aims to reflect a neutral, objective tone, but the output may reflect existing opinions on the web, giving the impression of a persona.
  • Duplication or contradiction: Because AI Overview is integrated alongside existing search results, it's possible for its output to contradict other results returned for the same query.

Over the past 25 years, Google Search has continuously evolved to meet the changing needs of users. With the introduction of AI Overview and the new AI-powered search features, Google is reimagining what search can do, making it more powerful and intuitive than ever. By preparing for this shift and optimizing your content and strategies accordingly, you can ensure that you stay ahead in search rankings and organic traffic.