How Should Website Owners Deal With Google’s New AI Overviews?

SEO is an industry which constantly shifts and changes. With the advent of AI hitting the world, it’s likely to change even more. It’s difficult to see where the world of SEO is heading, but there has already been one advancement in action. Google introduced AI overviews into its search results above the regular results. These appear for some but not all queries. Is it a step forward or a step back? We’ll see. As well as their successes, Google has a history of introducing lots of features and products that didn’t take off and were later rolled back. My question today is, how do SEOs and site owners optimise for AI overviews if they do end up sticking around?

What Are AI Overviews?

AI overviews are Google’s latest experiment in its ongoing attempt to make search results more relevant, faster, and possibly keep people on their platform longer. Essentially, AI overviews pull in snippets of information directly from various sources online and summarise them in a neat little box at the top of search results. The overview is meant to answer the user’s query quickly without needing to click through to external sites.

At first glance, this might seem like a shortcut to more efficient search. You ask a question, Google’s AI grabs what it thinks is the most relevant information from across the web, and voilà, the answer appears in seconds. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. For starters, there’s concern over how these overviews are formed. AI models, even the best ones, sometimes get things wrong. And if they’re pulling data from the web, who decides which sites get chosen as trustworthy sources? Not every site that shows up in a traditional Google search is reliable.

So, while the idea behind AI overviews is interesting, it opens up questions about accuracy, bias, and, crucially for SEOs, visibility. If more users find what they need directly from the overview, fewer people might click on the traditional blue links underneath.  It is also worth noting that Google has been in the business of answering questions with snippets for years now and have also been providing their question options which also aim to provide quick answers.

How Do AI Overviews Complement The More Traditional Search Results?

This is the big question for SEOs. How do these new AI summaries fit in with the search results we’ve been optimising for all these years? To some extent, they don’t replace traditional search results, they sit above them like a sort of cheat sheet. The rest of the page still exists, with its usual ads, organic results, and sometimes a local map or video thumbnails.

But it’s hard to argue that AI overviews won’t affect the click through rate of traditional search results. If a user can get a decent answer from the AI summary, what are the chances they’ll keep scrolling down? It’s like walking into a shop, finding exactly what you need at the front, and never bothering to look at anything else.

This doesn’t mean traditional SEO will suddenly be obsolete. But it might mean SEOs will need to work even harder to stand out. Those organic results may still play a vital role, but now they’ve got competition from AI itself.

Do AI Overviews Provide Clicks To External Sites?

If Google’s AI overviews summarise the answer right there at the top, is there still an opportunity for people to visit external websites? The short answer is: it depends.

From what we’ve seen so far, the AI overviews sometimes link out to the original sources of information, but not always. And even when they do, the links aren’t necessarily front and centre. This is a problem because one of the core reasons SEOs spend time optimising sites is to drive traffic. If that traffic dries up because users are satisfied with the AI summary, then what’s the point?

Google has claimed that AI overviews will help users discover more content on the web, but it’s hard to imagine how that would pan out if fewer people are clicking through. To be honest, it feels like this could be a way for Google to keep more users on their platform for longer. Instead of sending people away to external sites, they’re offering up more answers right in the search results themselves. That might be good for user experience in some cases, but it’s not great for webmasters trying to earn traffic.

Is It Possible To Optimise A Site To Show Up In AI Overviews?

This is where things get interesting for SEOs. Google’s AI overviews are based on machine learning models that scrape and summarise information from multiple sources. In theory, this means that content from your site could be pulled into one of these overviews. Whether that overview actually links back to your site is another matter. But how do you optimise for something like that? It’s a bit of a mystery right now.

However, there are some clues as to what Google might be looking for when selecting content to summarise in the overview. First and foremost, Google has always prioritised high-quality, authoritative content. So, it stands to reason that sites with a strong reputation for trustworthiness, backed by strong domain authority, are more likely to be featured.

Another factor to consider is the structure of your content. If your site provides clear, concise answers to specific questions, it’s more likely to be picked up by AI. Bullet points, lists, and FAQs might be useful here, as they give Google’s AI something to latch onto when summarising information.

But here’s the tricky part: optimising for AI overviews is a bit like shooting at a moving target. Google is constantly tweaking its algorithms, and what works today might not work tomorrow. SEOs will need to keep a close eye on how these overviews evolve.

The best approach right now is to focus on creating content that’s both user-friendly and informative. Answer questions thoroughly, but also get to the point quickly. You’ll also want to keep your content up to date, as AI models rely on the freshest information they can find. As well as that it’s another reminder to not just rely on Google organic traffic as it could go at any point.

Final Thoughts

Google’s introduction of AI overviews marks another shift in the SEO landscape. While it’s too early to tell whether these overviews will stick around or fizzle out like some of Google’s past experiments, SEOs need to be prepared. It’s likely to change the way people interact with search results, and that means we’ll need to adapt our strategies.

The key takeaway is this: don’t panic, but don’t get complacent either. Stay on top of these changes, keep producing high-quality content, and be ready to pivot when necessary. Stay up to date about SEO practices by listening to specialist optimisation companies. AI may be shaking things up, but there will always be a place for optimising content to meet users’ needs. The challenge is making sure your site remains relevant in a world where search is increasingly dominated by machine-generated summaries.