AI Overview Impact On SEO & How To Leverage Them For Better Rankings

When you search on Google, have you seen a small section titled AI Overview that pops up first above the other search results? If you are wondering what is AI overview, this is Google’s new search feature that provides AI-generated answers to user queries. The search engine giant’s ultimate goal is to enhance the search experience and make it better by providing users with quick direct answers. 

Initially called “Search Generative Experience, (SGE)” AI overviews have been in the works for quite some time. If you want to know why Google’s AI overviews is important, the reason for that how they can be helpful and the AI overview impact on SEO, etc will be examined in this blog.

New Problems & New Opportunities

Figuring out what is Google AI overview is one thing and understanding the main benefits of Google Search’s generative experience or AI overview is another, which is the higher chances of zero-click searches. What this means is that once users find the answer to their question in the AI overview section, they won’t visit any website. This affects organic traffic and leads to a lower ranking for the website. If you are worried about the negative AI overview impact on SEO, there is a bright side to this potential problem.

You might have seen a couple of website links in the AI Overview section just below the answer but above the other website links in the search results. If the contents of those websites are shown as the generated answer to user questions, the chances of users visiting those websites are higher, thereby increasing visibility, click-through rate and engagement.

How does Google AI overview work

When we type a search query and hit enter, the AI overview pops up, that part is understood, right? But have you wondered how does Google AI overview work? As explained earlier, the answers are usually generated using extensive data on the web and through AI technology powered by Gemini. However, not every query gets an AI overview answer. 

Those queries which are typically complex and require multiple searches are answered by AI. Another factor to consider when learning what is Google AI overview is that as the responses are generated, there can be instances of inaccurate information being presented but Google is working on solutions to avoid such scenarios. As long as you have a PC/smartphone and a Google account, you don’t have to worry about how to use Google AI overview. You can even turn them off if you aren’t interested in this whole AI thing.

Learn how to optimize for AI overviews

Once you have understood what is AI overview and would like to learn about optimizing them to increase visibility and rank your website higher, there are some ways to do that. Even though the search engine has already stated that its systems generate the whole AI overview process automatically, if you’re already doing the best seo and artificial intelligence practices, you’re pretty much on the right track. Let’s get on with the steps explained below:

Make sure your web pages are crawlable

If you prefer your webpage results to be shown on AI overviews, your website must be crawled and indexed by the search engine. Google usually discovers websites by crawling and indexing them means they are stored in databases. Despite these processes that explain how to optimize for AI overviews, there can be issues that can affect web page visibility. This includes 4XX errors, poor website structure, blocking access with robots.txt file, etc.

Implement On-Page SEO tactics

Another strategy on how to optimize for AI overviews is implementing on-page SEO on the various aspects of your webpage such as title tags, URLs, and headings. This helps Google understand your content a lot better and in turn, makes it easier to show on AI overview when relevant queries are made by the users.

Prioritize Quality Content

They say content is king and Google values them by all means. The higher the quality, the more likely it will get featured and will have a positive AI overview impact on SEO. So, start prioritizing by preparing quality SEO-friendly content.

Focus on long-tail keywords

As I told in the intro section, AI overview tends to provide results for complex queries which are more likely to be long-tail keywords. As they are longer, optimizing your content around them is a sure shot to becoming featured in the AI section and getting more organic traffic to your website.

How to prevent content appearing in AI overview

Even with understanding what is AI overview and the list of advantages this feature offers to websites, some businesses or websites may not prefer their contents to be summarized and presented to users. This can be due to privacy, copyright concerns or to make customers view the content in its entirety. Since AI overview is a SERP feature, this is not something websites can just turn off. So, if you are a concerned person and want to know how to prevent content appearing in AI overview, you can resort to these SEO methods to limit the chances of your pages appearing first.

Using robots.txt

This is essentially a file that tells Google not to crawl certain pages or sections of your website. Even though this process may limit your content from being discovered, the indexing process cannot be necessarily stopped.

Adding nosnippet tags

What a nosnippet meta tag does for a website is prevent search engines from generating a text snippet in standard search results. As snippets aren’t generated, this should theoretically stop your web content from being summarized.

Winding up

By now you must have understood what is AI overview and the various advantages and concerns it offers to website owners and businesses. It is indeed true that AI overview can help enhance webpages, and increase visibility and click-through rates as evidenced by Google, therefore, it is a good idea to optimize your web content to be included in AI overview. 

If you still wish to block your content, just remember that you’ll be losing on organic traffic, therefore, do it only if necessary. If you still wish to learn more about what is Google AI overview, book a consultation session with the experts at GTECH right now, a leading SEO agency in Dubai, UAE.