AI snippets (SGE) in Google are here!
Google's I/O conference just announced a couple hours ago that AI overviews would be rolling out to all users in the US, and here they are. The screenshot you see below is the first time I've ever seen one of these on my Google Workspace account (my email with the company domain), because even though I've been one of the first beta testers – the feature used to be limited to personal gmail accounts.
So, is it time to panic and abandon the practice of SEO? Not at all.
The world of 10 blue links is mostly over, yes. But that doesn't truly change the nature of marketing over search (and definitely not content marketing as a discipline). Because like it or not - technology has evolved since the SERPs first took that familiar shape, and so have our own needs as users.
We're spending more and more time in apps (whether on mobile or web apps within our browsers), we're used to interactive features, and we like seeing dynamic pages. The old static link interface hasn't really cut it for years - just think about all of the other layout changes that Google alone has introduced. We've had search snippets, image previews, people and company cards, location and map embeds, etc, etc, etc.
Now, my fellow marketers and any companies or creators publishing content online are probably freaking out right now. "What about the traffic to my site?" is the logical fear when confronted with these large AI interfaces on our screens.
But again, I think that fear is misplaced. Look at the screenshot below - it shows two links by default, for anybody that wants to read more. Any arrow there will reveal even more sources. And the coolest part? You can, in fact, still scroll down. 😎
I'm not being an ass, I promise. I know that this change will decrease traffic for certain kinds of queries.
But I also think we're entering an exciting era of SEO that's a lot more in tune with user needs and that requires a truly multi-dimensional approach to "search intent". Instead of just assuming that everyone will click on our site for every kind of query, we now need to analyze which queries would be satisfied with an AI summary, which would still prompt users to click on the original source to dive deeper, and which searches won't show these AI summaries at all!
I'm thrilled. I think that a world where we have Google reinventing the search experience from the ground up, OpenAI is rumored to release a competitor product, AI-native search providers like Perplexity are getting more popular, and browsers like Arc are making their own summary pages – is a world where we will be pushed to do better marketing.
We shouldn't feel like we're owed our 10 blue links. Search was always rented real estate, and if we accept that and start devising ways to get traffic across channels, across search engines, across SERP interfaces, and across different kinds of user needs – we will all be better off.
b2b saas marketer in australia | marketingcareers.com.au
1yMariya Delano there so much content ideas that you can mine from your customers (surprise surprise), things that solve their painpoints they will love, so write more about these painpoints!