What is Google's Search Generative Experience & How Will It Affect Your Website?

The New SERP: Google’s Search Generative Experience

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) has made waves within the digital marketing world, and for good reason: a brand new search experience is on the horizon. So, what is this SGE, how does it work, and (most importantly), how do we expect this new experience to shake things up? Let’s dive in and explore all that we know so far about the new SERP and how it could impact your brand.

What Is Google’s Search Generative Experience?

The buzz started back in May, when Google announced that it would be testing a new search experience. By August, Google had released its Search Generative Experience under the radar within the Google Search Labs experiment platform. Fast forward now, we anticipate that SGE will be rolled out any day.

What’s so different about this search experience? First of all, it's powered by Google’s AI and will focus on providing users with personalized and conversational results. Google has continued to refine its personalization capabilities throughout the years, but this new experience allows natural language processing capabilities to serve results that not only match search intent, but also match a specific user's conversational attributes. Essentially, Google wants its results to read less like your computer and more like advice from your big sister.

So, What Does This Mean for You? And How Can You Future-Proof Your Website for This New Experience?

As stated above, we expect to see a rise in zero-click searches from this experience due to the vast amount of information the user is getting directly from the SERP. Because of this, we may have to shift our strategies for search visibility. Here is what we're focusing on to continue driving awareness and traffic from Google for our clients:

1. Creating content that is valuable within diverse forms and addresses a user's intent. Content has always remained the backbone to any great marketing strategy and will continue to reign supreme here. The only difference now is that we want to make sure onsite content is inline with Google’s E-EAT criteria. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness are the attributes that make content relevant and credible to Google. You can learn how to make your content E-EAT worthy here.
2. Leveraging authoritative affiliate placements to build surround sound and thought leadership for your brand. Affiliate content inclusions (especially on page one SERPs) are even more important now, and not just for top-tier keywords.
3. Incorporate coupon page placements in your affiliate mix. Because we know domain authority and quality score have a big impact on what’s populated by SGE, we can expect coupon partners to show in this space for TM+ terms since they have both domain authority and high-quality scores for these terms. In the past, some brands have attempted to include a coupon or promo page on their site for added transparency and in an effort to outrank coupon sites - but this will be particularly challenging with the rollout of SGE.

For the full list of tips, check out the blog version of this article on our website.

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