Google’s new AI Overviews have already begun to influence search experience and searchers’ behaviors. So what does Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) mean for your business and its website? Discover what SGE is, how it functions, and its potential impact on your website traffic.
What is Google SGE?
Google SGE is an evolution of Google’s traditional search experience that uses AI Overviews to enhance search results and the user experience. For user searches that prompt SGE, an AI-powered section appears at the top of the search results page (SERP) to summarize the results and offer additional steps for the searcher such as asking follow-up questions. SGE also allows searchers to ask more detailed questions than traditional search could adequately handle, such as asking for comparisons or proactively filtering results.
In March 2024, Google began incorporating AI Overviews for a small subset of searches and only for a small amount of US traffic. Since then, Google has steadily increased the prevalence of this feature for searchers.
SGE’s Impact on Website Traffic
As with any of the larger search updates in recent years, brands are concerned with SGE’s potential impact on their website traffic and SEO/SEM efforts. However, Google still depends strongly on these publishers’ content and ad revenue so it’s unlikely they will allow SGE to significantly cannibalize most sites’ traffic.
Regarding SGE’s impact on search advertising, search ads still accounted for a whopping 56% of Google’s revenue in 2024. This intrinsically motivates Google to maintain prominent ad placement on SERPs featuring AI Overviews.
The more probable impact will be on website traffic from organic search. Similar changes to search have historically reduced traffic for some websites by these features occupying prime SERP placements and increasing “zero-click” searches (in which searchers can receive answers directly on the SERP without visiting a page link.)
SGE’s impact will mostly be felt on websites that produce simple “quick answer” content – not local businesses or websites that feature content of more depth. Searchers seeking more detailed information and Google’s dependence on websites’ display ad inventory will discourage Google from completely upending traditional search results with SGE.
Next Steps
AI Overviews appear here to stay in Google Search. Continued monitoring for trends in organic search traffic and search ad performance will be key for the websites and industries most affected by SGE.
It remains wise to continue diversifying the channels from your site derives traffic. Regardless of SGE’s future, websites that wholly rely on one medium for their visitors put themselves in dangerous territory. Businesses should strive to create social content that engages followers to interact with their website, foster industry relationships that result in referral links, and build brand awareness that drives direct traffic.
As with Google’s other search advances, businesses can actually benefit from SGE by earning features in its provided responses. References in similar offerings such as featured snippets released in 2014, have offered businesses heightened brand visibility and website traffic for searchers seeking additional information. To improve your site’s chances of being highlighted in SERP features, maintain SEO best practices including optimizing webpages’ structured data.
