The New World of AI Search

While Chat GPT is a powerful tool for marketing and has the fastest growing user adoption of any consumer application in modern history, surpassing more than half a million downloads in its first week, the majority of people have never actually used the stand-alone interface.

Microsoft Bing’s conversational AI, on the other hand, is embedded into a commonly used search engine and pulls in information from the web and summarizes it to answer users’ search queries. However, Microsoft Bing only makes up about nine percent of global desktop search traffic, while Google Chrome accounts for just under 84 percent; from a mobile perspective, Google Chrome accounts for 94 percent of all global search traffic.

"One of the biggest causes of concern for marketers will be the impact of the SGE snapshot on organic traffic."

So, where does Google, owner of the market leader browser, and a global tech behemoth, fit into this rapidly changing AI-powered conversational search landscape? Will a stand-alone conversational chatbot like Chat GPT upend its market dominance?

A Moment of Vulnerability for Google

Only time will tell but certainly the threat of Open AI’s GPT technology was enough to cause Google CEO Sundar Pichai to declare a code red back in December 2022, with insiders noting it as a moment of significant vulnerability for Google due to Open AI putting forward a new vision for what the future of search might look like.

Unlike Open AI, a small San Francisco start-up, Google has a lot to lose by releasing an AI search experience that it is not fully tested and ready for widespread adoption - not just from the public’s perspective, but from the publishers and advertisers it serves through its giant walled garden of interconnected products.

In 2006, Google’s co-founder Larry Page was quoted as saying, "The ultimate search engine would understand everything in the world. It would understand everything that you asked it, and give you back the exact right thing instantly”. Larry’s vision looks set to become a reality this year, with Google’s new Search Generative Experience (SGE) announced in May 2023 with the promise of “supercharging search through generative AI”.

Google’s search algorithm currently ranks web content based on an internal set of criteria, notably relevance and quality of content, and returns answers to search queries through a three-step process of crawling, indexing and serving – the last step resulting in a list of top organic results being displayed on its search engine results page (SERP) in addition to related paid ads. Queries typically fall into three categories: (1) navigational, (2) informational and (3) transactional and are answered with a mix of paid and organic results.

Augmenting the SERP

With SGE, Google will use AI to augment the SERP, enabling new types of queries – conversational queries – to give users a better user experience. SGE will enable users to ask natural language questions like “What’s the weather like today” and have the search query answered with a human-like response which takes into consideration things like location and browsing history.

"While organic traffic will likely drop off, what makes it through to the website will be more qualified traffic and, therefore, more likely to convert, making it inherently more valuable."

The impact of the incorporation of the SGE snapshot on SEO is expected to be significant, with beta testing currently showing that it pushes organic results down the SERP quite significantly, particularly for product or informational searches. One of the biggest causes of concern for marketers will be the impact of the SGE snapshot on organic traffic.

Every significant iteration to Google’s search engine has effected some level of change, so why would SGE be any different? For example, when Google first introduced featured snippets, which saw a greater amount of content featured on the SERP than ever before, organic traffic fell. Why? Because more content was available on the SERP itself without users needing to click through for more information and therefore spending more time on the SERP.

In the case of SGE, for example, if a user asks for a recipe for a cake, the recipe will feature directly on the SERP and facilitate follow-up questions like “what kind of icing should I use?”. This could actually be a net positive for marketers, however, as while organic traffic will likely drop off, what makes it through to the website will be more qualified traffic and, therefore, more likely to convert, making it inherently more valuable.

"The richer the data, the easier it will be for Google to understand the content its taking context from and the better chance of being featured in the SGE snapshot."

Increasing share of voice (SOV) on Google’s SERP is one of the most important SEO KPIs and proven to be a driver of long-term brand growth and fighting for that SOV is likely to become even more competitive with the introduction of SGE.

Impact of SGE Snapshot on SEO

With that said, the question on every marketers’ mind is how will SGE impact SEO and what can brands do ahead of its release? The answer is simple – optimise your content and consider how Google will parse your content. In essence, tell a story with your data so that Google can understand and contextualise it.

Marketers should focus on improving their schema markup – especially user generated content like reviews, in addition to their usual product or service details (price, availability etc.). Google’s E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) formula is still king when it comes to SEO, with the second “E” for “experience” being a recent addition to the best practice guidelines. Google values first-hand experience in the form of user-generated content. SGE takes context from web content, so it will take things like reviews and pull them into the generative results.

"Tell a story with your data so that Google can understand and contextualise it."

The richer the data, the easier it will be for Google to understand the content its taking context from and the better chance of being featured in the SGE snapshot. Long-tail keywords, more specific queries that have lower search volume, are also likely to become more and more relevant due to SGE’s natural language-style search and are likely to be cheaper due to less competition.

Crucially, in line with SEO best practices of old, marketers should focus on creating a variety of high quality, well-structured content in a variety of formats (video, infographic etc.) which addresses the intended audience’s questions or problems, helping create authority for your brand.

While the full impact of SGE has yet to be determined, US-based marketers can sign up to test out the beta version of SGE now through Google’s Search Labs. The full version is likely to be rolled-out globally in December 2023, though no official date has yet been announced.