More on the latest UI changes in SGE and how this new feature fits into the evolution of search engine results.

Are Google's AI-generated summaries in their Search Generative Experience (SGE) interface unfairly stealing clicks from the website publishers who originally created those answers?

This is the question everyone in SEO and digital marketing has been asking for a couple of months now.

With Google's latest update displaying links to SGE's sources more prominently, now seems the best time to revisit that question.

Let's stop talking about AI for a moment
But before we start, please do me a favor. for the next couple of sections, let's set aside how the snippets in SGE are generated.

Why? Because I've noticed that too many discussions about SGE devolve into arguments about generative AI and large language models.

It's a worthwhile discussion to have, and we should be talking about it. But we're missing the point by reducing our thinking about SGE to the particular algorithm that's currently powering it.

Fixating on this particular iteration of an algorithm that Google uses to generate previews of search results distracts us from asking much more interesting questions.

As SEOs, we should think about features in terms of the search experience itself and ask:

What is the search page displaying?
In what ways is the search page presenting that information?
How do the structure and content of the search page impact those who create the content being displayed (website publishers) and those seeking answers to their search queries (users)?
How do those impacts compare against alternative implementations of a search results page?
Which of those implementations makes for the best search experience (whatever that might mean)?
We can't ask any of those questions when we are getting stuck in the complexities of how Google's generative AI model works.

So, for a few minutes, let's pretend it doesn't matter how Google generates the answers displayed in SGE.

Our discussion won't depend on whether those answers are crafted by generative AI, a different algorithm, submitted by website owners, hand-written by a Googler stuck in some basement office, or magically cast into existence by a team of little green fairies.

Can you do that for me? Great!

Now, let's talk about SGE.

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Article by Mariya Delano, featuring quotes from:
- Rand Fishkin, SparkToro
- Lily Ray, Amsive Digital
- Danielle Stout Rohe, Cox Automotive
- Paul Shapiro, Shopify.