Mark your calendars – it seems likely that May 14, 2024 will go down as an important day in search engine history. AI Overviews, part of the Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), are out of Labs and into (US) search results, with more countries soon to follow. We’ve known this was on the horizon for about a year, so it’s not a huge surprise, but here are some Day 0 observations from the smart folks at Level.
Overview and Ads Don’t Often Overlap
Although Google is denying it, right now it seems like overviews and ads aren’t overlapping often. Most queries our team has tested have either ads, OR overview, but not both.
For example, here’s a search for basketball shoes (AI Overview, no ads)…
And here’s a similarly-structured post for running shoes (ads, no Overview)…
Obviously, Google is highly motivated to get both the customer experience AND the monetization side of the equation right eventually, but they’re clearly prioritizing experience over monetization at this very early stage. Will be interesting to watch how that develops.
Reference links remain somewhat arbitrary.
This has been a major pain point for those exploring SGE in labs – and questions about this are likely to be amplified with Overviews live. One (ticky tacky) example – would you trust a website called “Kale Junkie” as your definitive source for how to cook a steak?
Stay Tuned for More on Google SGE…
Lots more to come as we officially enter the age of mass-market SGE. Good SEOs have been preparing for Google SGE for a year now – reach out to us if you have any questions about how “SGE ready” your SEO strategy is! Or, you know… Google it?
