Supercharging search with generative AI: what does this mean for SEO?

The robots are taking over.?

Well, that’s certainly what it looks like if you’ve browsed any tech, marketing or business publication in the last 6 months. ChatGPT is everywhere. Even my mum’s using it, and to say she’s tech averse is an understatement.?

The rise of ChatGPT and other AI language models has caused an innovation arms race amongst many of the world’s big tech companies. Fearful of being left behind and losing market share to their competitors, businesses in Silicon Valley and beyond are setting up shop and hawking their AI innovations and to shareholders and consumers alike.?

Surprisingly, Microsoft was the first to market when they announced they were integrating ChatGPT into their search engine, Bing.?

This rightly rattled Google, the king of search, and to avoid losing their seat at the head of the big tech table they announced something radical at their recent Google I/O developer conference.??

What is the Google I/O developer conference and why does it matter for SEO?

The Google I/O (the I/O stands for input output, a developer joke, don’t ask me) developer conference is an annual event organized by Google, aimed at showcasing and discussing the latest advancements in technology, software development, and services offered by Google.?

SEO’s and marketers keep a close eye on it because Google often unveils significant updates, algorithms, and features during the conference that can impact search engine optimization strategies. Any digital marketer worth their salt will keep one eye on the event just to stay abreast of their competition.?

What did they announce for search and why is it so important for SEO?

In a nutshell, and I don’t want to sound dramatic here, but this Google I/O conference is likely going to herald the biggest change to organic search in the past decade. The layout of the search engine results page (SERP) is going to change dramatically.?

It will move from a list of organic results bookended by paid ads and interspersed with rich snippets to a large, above the fold text box which will populate with answers to searchers? questions which will appear directly on the search page. Google have called this a Search Generative Experience or SGE.?

No more clicking on blue links. Your answer (and your 4 follow up questions) delivered to you directly in the search engine.?

It’s going to go from this:

To this:???

The reason behind Google developing this feature is that, in their words, they want to “supercharge search”. They want to minimise the legwork searchers need to do to find reliable, accurate answers by providing concise, helpful information without having to click away from Google search engine.??

What does this mean for our clients? Are we worried?

Are SEOs quaking in their boots? Not quite, but SGE has done more than turn a few heads in the digital marketing space. It’s too early to tell what the effects of this change will be. The new SERP layout hasn’t hit UK shores yet but the general consensus amongst the SEO community is that SGE will have 5 big impacts on search and for clients.

Purely organic results are going to suffer. Badly.? ?

As you can see from the SGE image above, the “traditional” blue link organic results have been pushed way down the SERP. This means battling for a coveted P1 position in the SERP won’t matter nearly as much as it did before. The aim of the game now is making sure Google chooses your content to create its SGE answer. This brings me onto impact 2.

Content needs to be attractive to the generative search experience?

SGE cites its sources. Which means the goal for SEOs post-SGE update is to get their content referenced in the SGE answer. Readers have the opportunity to request further information from the Google AI or can do their own further reading by clicking on one of the sources used to create the SGE answer.?

Making sure your brand has some skin in the game in those named sources will likely be a big KPI for SEO teams up and down the country before the year’s out.??

E.E.A.T signals are still really important

How does Google choose which website to use as sources for its SGE answers? Much like its algorithm we haven’t got a clue. But the Google quality rater guidelines haven’t changed (yet) and the search engine is still putting a lot of emphasis on experience, expertise, authority and trust.?

We’d assume Google only wants to pull its answers from websites that are trust-worthy, authoritative in their niche and full of expert opinions and advice. This means authorship, reviews and content quality are just as important as ever for SEO strategy.?

Brands can’t rely on sponsored ads for revenue anymore

With SGE taking up all the prime real estate at the top of the search engine results page it is currently unclear where paid ads will go. This should be worrying to any business that uses that marketing channel to generate a large portion of its revenue.?

It’s highly likely that paid ads will still be an important part of search. Afterall, Google still needs to make money and ad revenue is a sure fire way to do that but where and how these ads will appear post SGE is another headache for marketers. ?

Sites that make money from affiliate marketing are going to need to rethink their strategy

SGE will likely lead to less searchers clicking onto websites. This in turn will mean that any site that generates revenue from affiliate links will likely see their profits plummet. Businesses built around affiliate revenue streams should look into how they can protect themselves from the SGE update.?

So is GSE different from ChatGPT??

The short answer is yes. To get to the crux of the difference it’s a good idea to look at how each tool positions itself in the market.?

ChatGPT is a productivity tool. It’s an AI language model designed to help users write copy, think up ideas and produce reports.?

GSE is an AI language tool being used to supercharge search. Its goal is to provide searchers with the information they want as quickly and painlessly as possible.?

A few final thoughts

Before I sign off a few other points worth noting quickly about SGE.?

• The revamped layout puts increased emphasis on brand. When you’ve got 3 sources you could click on, all displayed equally, brand affinity and trust could be the biggest needle mover for CTR.
• Search generative experience has really rattled some published and news organisations. So much so there’s talk of blocking Google crawlers on sites like The Times. This is very much a watch and see situation but this could be a sign of things to come.?

What next for the generative search experience?

Well, for the UK nothing is changing immediately. The new SERP page is getting rolled out in the US first so UK SEOs need to sit tight, observe and plan. What can clients and companies be doing to get ahead of this development? Can we start reformatting on page copy to maximise its chance of getting pulled by SGE? Can we better mark up page’s with schema to help with this.?

We don’t have the answers yet but the next 12-18 months are going to be exciting for a lot of SEOs.?

P.S bonus points for anyone who can Identify the passage I wrote with the assistance of ChatGPT

This article was picked up by performance marketing world too. You can read more about SGE on their site.