Everything You Need To Know About AI Overviews

Just when we’ve recovered from the March 2024 core update, Google hits us with another major change.

AI Overviews, Google’s new generative AI search feature, has finally arrived. These results take center stage on page one of the SERPs and have the potential to completely change the way people search. 

It’s not enough for marketers to know what they are and how they work. Given this new feature has the potential to dry up your search traffic, you need to understand what you can do and how you can optimize for them. 

That’s what I’m going to cover today. In this article, I’ll give you the lowdown on AI Overviews, explain the impact they could have on SEO, share the findings of our research, and offer some advice on how to get an AI Overview citation. 

Key Takeaways

• Google AI Overviews (AIOs) integrate generative AI into the search experience. Google combines its Gemini large language model with its core web ranking systems to generate summaries for searches with informational intent. 
• Google claims users are more satisfied with search results that contain AI Overviews. They ask longer, more complex questions and are more likely to stay on pages they click through to. 
• AI Overviews are far from perfect. Users have documented numerous fails, including advice to stick glue to pizza and eat rocks. Google has made several changes to AIOs as a result, including limiting AIOs for nonsensical queries, health topics, and other queries that could result in misleading answers. 
• Many marketers are optimistic about AI Overviews, despite the threat they pose to search traffic. Our survey of 623 digital marketers finds well over half (59.55 percent) are very optimistic or slightly optimistic.
• Google hasn’t released specific guidance on getting featured as a resource in AI Overviews, but you should be able to increase your odds by following SEO best practices. These include optimizing your E-E-A-T signals, improving content quality, and eliminating fluff.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Are AI Overviews and How Do They Work?
• The Impact of AI Overviews on SEO
  • AI Overview Problems
• Optimizing Your Content for AI Overviews
• The Future of AI Overviews
• Conclusion

What Are AI Overviews and How Do They Work?

AI Overviews (AIO) is Google’s attempt at integrating generative AI into search results. Initially called Search Generative Experience, Google tested the feature for a year in its Search Labs before launching it to the public on May 14th, 2024.

At the moment, AI Overviews only appear for logged-in users in the U.S., but Google plans to expand to more countries soon. They don’t appear for every query; only when Google believes AI Overviews will be particularly helpful to users. 

Here’s what an AI Overview result looks like at the time of this writing:

AI overviews can contain a number of different elements, including: 

• An AI-generated answer box
• A bulleted list
• One or more images
• Product listings
• A source panel 

AI Overviews will either appear at the very top of search results or between the paid and organic listings. But they don’t dominate the screen’s real estate as they did in testing. As you can see in the image below, I can still see the top organic result and the Knowledge Panel. 

If you click show more, Google will generate a more in-depth answer that includes additional information, tips, and sources:

AI Overviews are powered in part by a customized large language model and by Google’s core web ranking systems. This allows Google to produce chat-like replies while also carrying out search tasks, such as identifying the most relevant links from Google’s index. In other words, it’s slightly more advanced than the AI tools that let you create copy using artificial intelligence. 

The Impact of AI Overviews on SEO

Given Google’s aim with AI Overviews is to stop users from having to click through dozens of sites, you would think this feature is an existential threat to the SEO community that will send organic traffic levels plummeting.  

But, according to Google, that may not be the case. Google’s data shows AI overview users are more satisfied with search results, and they ask longer, more complex questions. Users are more likely to stay on pages they click through from AI overviews, too.

The results of our own research agree that AI Overviews could have a positive impact on the Google experience. We asked 623 digital marketers in the US who are familiar with AI Overviews what they thought of the feature. 

Well over half (59.55 percent) said they were very optimistic or slightly optimistic about their impact. Only 12.2 percent said they were very pessimistic. 

What’s more, 72.78 percent are optimistic about the impact of AI Overviews on their website traffic. This is notable because my team and I believe most sites will lose traffic to AI Overviews, since they are now the first item in many SERPs where they appear..  

What explains the difference? Our respondents could believe they’ll see higher clickthrough rates (and, therefore, more traffic) if Google lists their sites as a source. And there is truth to this. Articles from my blog have seen month-over-month traffic increases after being cited in AI Overviews results.

AI Overview Problems

AI Overviews aren’t just posing a potential problem to the SEO community. The quality of the results has—to put it nicely—been lacking. 

There have been a series of well-documented (and ridiculed) hallucinations that include a suggestion to add glue to a pizza and eat one small rock per day. 

Well over half (55.06 percent) of our survey respondents saw major errors, too. Of those:

• 67.35 percent encountered inaccurate answers
• 58.02 percent saw outdated answers
• 60.06 percent saw inappropriate content
• 53.06 percent saw irrelevant content for their query

You can read more about these issues in my AI Fails article, but they are occurring because Google’s Gemini AI model can’t actually read or understand the content it source results from. Specifically, it doesn’t understand sarcasm or humor, which means it can’t differentiate ironic content and jokes from factual articles. 

Optimizing Your Content for AI Overviews

The best way to protect your search traffic against AI Overviews is to appear as a reference link in the answer box like my blog does below:

The good news is this can happen naturally. In our survey, 41 percent of respondents found queries where their site or brands were mentioned, and 42.50 percent found queries where Google linked to their sites.

The bad news is there’s no definitive guidance on how to get an AI overview link yet. 

Google says its systems automatically determine which links appear. “There is nothing special for creators to do to be considered other than to follow our regular guidance for appearing in search, as covered in Google Search Essentials.”

But which best practices should you pay attention to in particular?

First, I recommend you improve your E-E-A-T signals. Google loves content that has high levels of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This could be a boost to the chances of these sites getting featured in AI Overviews. 

You can increase your E-E-A-T signals by:

• Creating an about page that lists you and your team’s certifications, years of experience, and anything else that makes you an expert.
• Acquiring backlinks from high-authority websites (something 44.51 percent of our respondents aim to do).
• Keeping your content fresh, accurate and relevant (a goal for 40.43 percent of our respondents).

Next, you should improve the quality of your content. Google wants to feature the best content as a resource. But, given that there are only a couple of spots available, you’ll have to make sure your content is exceptional.

Achieve this by:

• Being original: have an opinion or include first-party data where possible.
• Showcase your expertise: write from a place of authority or hire writers who are subject matter experts. Show subject matter expertise prominently in author bios and about pages. If you can’t hire experts to write for you, consider having them review your content like Healthline:

• Address the reader’s needs: Solve the reader’s pain points first before selling your solution. 
• Be specific: the more specific and actionable your content, the more likely Google will incorporate your strategies in its answer. 
• Including reliable sources: When you make a claim in your content, back it up by citing well-known and credible sources.

Don’t be afraid of creating new content to target these search terms. The majority (57.14 percent) of our respondents said they are increasing their focus on content creation to improve rankings and traffic. 

Since Google says it uses AI Overviews to answer complex queries, you should make sure your content targets long tail keywords. By targeting keywords with four or more words, you’ll ensure a level of specificity that may help you appear in AI Overviews. 

Remember, you can use the Keyword Ideas tool in Ubersuggest to find long tail keywords:

Finally, eliminate fluff by ensuring your content is short and to the point. 

Research by Tim Cameron-Kitchen, founder and CEO of Exposure Ninja, finds that most of the sites AI Overviews link to use short sentences and clear language. His theory is that because AI Overviews provide easy-to-read answers, they need easy-to-summarize sources.

The Future of AI Overviews

Given the errors that we’ve highlighted, the reaction to AI Overviews has been lukewarm at best. 

To be fair, Google has already taken steps to prevent these ridiculed and potentially dangerous hallucinations. It is limiting AI Overviews for nonsensical queries, health-related topics, and any other queries where the tool could offer misleading advice. 

It is also changing the frequency with which AI Overviews appear. At one point, AI Overviews were appearing in 84 percent of queries. But recent research by BrightEdge finds they now appear in just 7 percent of queries. The size of AI Overviews is also shrinking, and the results are now 13 percent smaller on average. 

How Google sources materials is changing, too. It is significantly decreasing its reliance on user-generated content sites like Reddit and Quora, which were frequently cited in poor-quality answers. Neither site is in the top ten most-cited domains at the time of writing.

Despite the fallout, marketers are taking action. On top of the strategies I discussed above, two-thirds of our respondents said they are increasing their marketing budget due to AI Overviews.

Many wouldn’t turn off AI Overviews, even if they could. Almost half (43.5 percent) said they would leave it on for all queries. One-third said they would leave it on but be open to turning it off in the future. 

Conclusion

AI Overviews may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I don’t think it’s going anywhere. That means we, as marketers, need to understand how it works, which queries it’s appearing for, and how we can increase our odds of showing up as a resource. 
I hope I’ve started you off on the right foot. Your next steps? Learn how to increase your domain’s topical authority and create awesome content to encourage Google to feature you in its resource panel.

See How My Agency Can Drive More Traffic to Your Website

• SEO - unlock more SEO traffic. See real results.
• Content Marketing - our team creates epic content that will get shared, get links, and attract traffic.
• Paid Media - effective paid strategies with clear ROI.

Book a Call