This blog was updated on September 16, 2024 to reflect recent changes and provide more accurate information.
Google’s new AI-powered search result, AI Overviews (previously called Search Generative Experience or SGE), promises to be a major development in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Due to the rapid emergence of several AI-enhanced search engines including Google AI Overviews, BingGPT, and seemingly more every day, we have spent the past year analyzing the potential impact of AI powered search engines on higher education content marketing and how to optimize for AI Overviews.
In this blog, I share some of the strategies we’ve learned from this analysis to help you future-proof your website content, ensuring it consistently appears in organic search results, no matter how AI changes the search game. For a deeper dive into this topic, you can also watch my recorded webinar on Optimizing Your Webpages for Google’s AI Search Generative Experience.
What are AI Overviews and Generative Search Engines?
Google’s AI Overviews provide an interactive response bubble to certain keyword searches, offering a summarized answer above traditional organic search result links. These AI Overviews source information from various websites, offering panels and snippets designed around the user’s search intent.
AI algorithms have subtly influenced search engine ranking mechanisms for years, but new generative search engines like Google’s AI Overviews bring this technology to the forefront, making it visible on the search results. While not all queries trigger an AI Overview, studies show that AI Overviews appear in some form for 98% of education-related searches.
How AI Overviews Appear in Search Results
Google’s AI Overview is a full-width feature that appears above traditional search results as part of an experimental “Search Generative Experience.” Other recent generative search engines on the market like Perplexity have taken the same approach. Typically, the AI-generated search results include:
- A quality warning: “Generative AI is experimental.”
- The generated answer result, which includes text paragraphs, lists, or both.
- Clickable thumbnail panels to relevant web pages presented in a horizontal carousel.
- Links to source websites within the answer bubble, seen if citation carrots are expanded.
- Suggested follow-up questions or a chatbot-style interface
