Google's AI Overviews - The New Search

Slides from my talk a the 2025 WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress where I spoke about the impact of Google's AI Overviews, how to optimise for them, and what the other chatbots have done to compete with search.

Transcript

1. Google’s AI Overviews The New Search Barry Adams 06 May 2025
2. Barry Adams ➢ Active in SEO since 1998 ➢ Specialist in SEO for News Publishers ➢ Newsletter: SEOforGoogleNews.com ➢ Co-founder of the News & Editorial SEO Summit
3. I’ve Worked With…
4. AI Overviews
5. AI Overviews launched in May 2024
6. Summarised answers at the top of a search result
7. AI Overviews are made by Generative AI • Using Google’s own ‘Gemini’ Large Language Model • ‘Multi-step reasoning capabilities’ • But... not 100% accurate; ➢ All LLMs ‘hallucinate’ – make things up ➢ It’s because they’re not ‘real’ AI ➢ LLMs are super-advanced word predictors; -‘Probabilistic autocomplete’
9. LLM with Search + Grounding ‘Grounding’ = Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) ‘Grounding’ LLM Question Search engine Grounded answers with links
10. Source Attribution
11. Up to 10 Source links
12. Sources in AI Overviews https://www.sistrix.com/blog/ai-vs-seo-what-does-the- future-of-search-look-like/
13. AI Overviews always cite sources • AI Overviews have at least 1 cited source link; ➢ Every segment in an AI Overview will have a source link ➢ Average number of cited links: 6 -Sidebar on Desktop, carousel on Mobile ➢ Most cited links are pages ranked on the 1st page
14. AI Overviews are still rolling out
15. AI Overviews in Europe • Austria • Belgium • Germany • Ireland • Italy • Poland • Portugal • Spain • Switzerland • United Kingdom Currently active in:
16. AI Overviews in Europe https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/01/googles-ai-feature- on-hold-in-most-eu-member-states-due-to-strict-rules
17. AI Overviews in Europe ‘The flurry of EU tech rules including the AI Act, Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), “hold back the launch of innovative features” leading to concerns around product innovation. “The EU is behind when it comes to product innovation, and users in Europe will have a less good product experience.”’
18. AIO does not appear for news queries* * With very few exceptions
21. AI Overviews and News • Theory: AIO and QDF are mutually exclusive; ➢ QDF: Query Deserves Freshness ➢ QDF is a query/topic classifier that triggers a Top Stories box ➢ QDF != AIO
22. Google Says… https://blog.google/products/search/ai-overviews-update-may-2024/
23. Google Says… “…we aim to not show AI Overviews for hard news topics, where freshness and factuality are important” https://blog.google/products/search/ai-overviews-update-may-2024/
24. Optimising for AI Overviews • Many cited sources in AI Overviews do not rank on the first page of Google’s regular results • AI Overviews cast a broader net than regular Google results https://ziptie.dev/blog/state-of-ai-overviews-5-google- aio-disruptions-found-after-analyzing-500k-queries/
28. Content Segmentation / ‘Chunking’ • Divide your articles into concrete paragraphs/sections; ➢ Provide a strong subheading to introduce the section ➢ Phrase the subheading as a question • Each paragraph/section should have its own topical focus; ➢ Minimise the mention of other topics/entities in a section • Increases probability the page is used as a cited source; ➢ If the paragraph/section aligns with the user’s prompt query ➢ Taps into LLMs’ RAG/Grounding behaviours
29. Key factors for showing in AI Overviews • Quality • Relevancy • Authority • Accuracy ‘Classic’ SEO signals
30. AI Overviews’ Impact on Traffic? https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks/
31. AI Overviews = Lower CTR • Despite Google’s claims, AI Overviews send less traffic to websites; ➢ Users find the answer directly in the AI Overview • The good news..? ➢ AI seems to generate more search queries on Google
33. AI Mode
34. Fighting against AI Overviews? • Prevent your content from being used to train Google’s Gemini LLM: User-agent: Googlebot-Extended Disallow: / • Probably a good idea; ➢ Prevents your copyrighted content from being used
35. Fighting against AI Overviews? • Prevent your webpages from being linked as a source in an AI Overview: <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet" /> • Probably a bad idea; ➢ Also impacts presentation in all other Google surfaces
36. What about the other AIs?
37. AI Search Engines
38. Search Equivalent Queries on ChatGPT
41. https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-google-search-grew- 20-in-2024-receives-373x-more-searches-than-chatgpt/
43. Traffic from AI Search Engines https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-traffic-study/
44. Proposal for llms.txt https://llmstxt.org/
45. Want to confuse the AIs? https://blog.cloudflare.com/ai-labyrinth/
46. Optimising for AI Search • LLMs need to crawl the web; ➢ Technical SEO principles for crawling and indexing • LLMs ingest content; ➢ On-page SEO principles for relevancy • LLMs focus on relevancy and brand signals; ➢ Off-page SEO principles for authority
47. Key factors for showing up in AI Search • Quality • Relevancy • Authority • Accuracy ‘Classic’ SEO signals
48. Is it AEO? GEO? AIEO? It’s still SEO.
49. Summarised
50. AI Search will not replace classic search • Google’s AI Overviews are an evolution; ➢ There will be some traffic loss ➢ Focus on building strong brand signals ➢ News is excluded from AIO (for now) • AI offers alternative ways to search; ➢ Market shares are small… so far ➢ Not yet worth focusing on ➢ But, be ready to pivot ➢ It’s still SEO
51. https://www.seoforgooglenews.com/
52. Thank You barry@polemicdigital.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryadams/ https://www.SEOforGoogleNews.com/