Google published its AI Overviews in late May, and I’ve been tracking the queries and third-party research ever since.
AI Overview sometimes gives wrong answers. X’s account, Enough Googlingsummarizes some of these complaints: Google has fixed many of the issues, primarily by limiting the visibility of summaries and filtering out user-generated content from sources.
Here’s what we know so far about the AI Overview rollout:
15% of queries
Last week’s article from Search Engine Land Citing research According to research from search engine optimization company BrightEdge, Overviews currently only show up in 15% of queries, which coincides with my observations about queries. I am followingOthers in the industry have had similar experiences.
Public AI summaries are only visible to searchers in the United States who are signed in to a Google account, so visibility may be reduced.
Lab and Public
Searchers who registered with the Labs edition Search for generative experiences Labs, the predecessor to AI Overviews, may show Labs-only results. To access public results, you must either opt out of Labs or create a Google profile in Chrome to test both.
We tested the query, “How to choose a career.” When you log into your Labs profile, you’ll see an overview at the top that says “Search Labs.”
Search Labs participants will have a unique designation above their summary. Click on image to enlarge.
If you use a profile other than Labs, you’ll see the same AI overview, including visible sources.
General non-Labs search users will see the source below the summary. Click on image to enlarge.
AI Optimization Overview
in Testing SGE results Even before the outline was publicly released, we knew it wouldn’t be that hard to get your site in the AI’s answers. 2023 SGE Patent:
- Google’s AI answers summarize existing search results
- After Google creates the summary, it generates a reference (i.e. a link within the answer).
The relative ease obviously remains true. A quick test Search optimizer Cyrus Shepard quickly generated links to his AI summaries. He first identified queries that generated summaries where his page ranked organically in a featured snippet. He then updated the page with a paragraph that closely matched the text in the summary. Links to his page immediately appeared.
However, Shepherd raised two caveats.
- His page lost a featured snippet.
- The summary link disappeared immediately.
The links disappeared too quickly to draw any meaningful conclusions, such as their impact on featured snippets. But the rapid change in appearance and disappearance from the summary suggests that the AI’s answers are in flux and caution when implementing new optimization tactics. Google changes its AI summaries on a daily basis. You might see short-term gains, but there’s too little data for long-term measures.
