Brand, SEO & Generative Search

What is Google AIO?
How does AI Overview work, how can we track our presence in this feature and how can we see its effect on our website's organic traffic?
And why must we optimize it to be visible?
All these questions are answered in my deck thanks to the insights we can obtain observing AI Overviews examples and analyzing the patent of SGE.

Transcript

1. Gianluca Fiorelli International & Strategic SEO Consultant X –LinkedIn IloveSEO.net BRAND, SEO & GENERATIVE SEARCH
2. Our path BRAND, SEO & GENERATIVE SEARCH 3 1 2 What How Why #WMF2024
3. WHAT 1 of 3
16. And all this happened after months of beta testing
23. And it seems that Google is serious with correcting the issues and regaining the trust of the users (and media).
24. Even at the cost of making AIO almost invisible for a time.
25. “If you're seeing them far less, you're correct, they're pretty much gone in a few sectors!” (Aleyda Solís)
29. SGE AIO
30. What types of AI Overviews we have seen so far?
31. Check her post!
32. Duplicative AI Overviews
35. Summarizing/Complementary AI Overviews
36. Investopedia Chase Bank NerdWallet (2) Forbes Bankrate
37. Chasebank (#1) NerdWallet 1 (#2) Forbes (#3) Investopedia (#4) Bankrate (#7) NerdWallet 2 (#9)
38. Accelerators AI Overviews
39. Practically the same behavior of the Featured Snippets… Also note how AIO used the caption of the photo for generating its snapshot.
41. AI Overview designed as a sort of Pillar/Landing page that…
42. … sends you to a new AIO pages Merchant/PDPs…
43. … offering so a completely alternative search journey experience than the classic organic PLP search results list.
44. It is the ”ecommerce” query space – also for branded searches – where AI Overview is experimenting the most.
45. Also, because Ads are going to come quite soon on AI Overviews… probably when Google will have fixed the most serious hallucination issues it experienced at its roll-out.
46. In the meanwhile, Ads tend to be shown above the AI Overview feature.
47. HOW 2 of 3
48. How does Google create the AI Overviews?
49. And what can we do to appear in AIO and how can we track and measure our presence?
50. A first answer is offered to us by Google itself in its post announcing the update and corrections they are rolling out after the media backlash followed to Google I/O.
51. AI Overviews […] are not simply generating an output based on training data. Liz Reid VP – Head of Search Google
52. While AI Overviews are powered by a customized language model, the model is integrated with our core web ranking systems and designed to carry out traditional “search” tasks, like identifying relevant, high-quality results from our index. That’s why AI Overviews don’t just provide text output but include relevant links so people can explore further. Liz Reid VP – Head of Search Google
53. LLMS
54. RAG
55. https://patents.google.com/patent/US11769017B1/en
56. The process
57. Query submission
58. Analyzing the query using different LLMs for understanding context and intent.
59. Content retrieval (text, images, videos…)
60. Processing additional content from related searches and information others found helpful under similar query circumstances.
61. Generation of the summary that’s supposed to be directly helpful to the user, who inputted the query.
62. Dynamic and Context-Aware Responses: The AI adapts its responses based on the specific context of each query submission.
63. Google learns from how users interact with the search results. If certain responses are consistently overlooked in favor of others, or if user clicks suggest a preference, the AI modifies future responses to align more closely with user behavior.
64. The AI continually updates its understanding based on new information and interactions.
65. Which LLM?
66. “…the system selects, from multiple candidate generative models: none, one, or multiple to utilize in generating response(s) to render responsive to the query.”
67. Query type, using classifiers. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
68. Analysis of the SERP characteristics (top results and content types). Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
69. Processing of the query content using ML classifiers. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
70. Application of rules based on presence or absence of words or voice characteristics. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
71. Considerations about the quality and trustworthiness of search result documents. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
72. Individuation of the presence of certain words or content types in the query. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
73. Contextualization and personalization. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
74. Resource optimization for minimizing computational costs. Factors for choosing the LLM(s).
75. What sources?
76. Query-dependent. Factors for choosing the sources.
77. Query-dependent. Factors for choosing the sources. Location.
78. Query-dependent. Factors for choosing the sources. Location. Language.
79. Query-independent. Factors for choosing the sources.
80. Query-independent. Factors for choosing the sources. Popularity.
81. Query-independent. Factors for choosing the sources. Popularity. Trustworthiness.
82. Query-independent. Factors for choosing the sources. Popularity. Trustworthiness. Content diversity.
83. Query-independent. Factors for choosing the sources. Popularity. Trustworthiness. Content diversity. Relevance over rank.
84. What does it mean for us?
85. What does it mean for us? Factors for choosing the sources. Popularity... aka being the source of reference for the quality and usefulness of the resources we create, so to earn natural links and mentions.
86. What does it mean for us? Factors for choosing the sources. Popularity... aka not limiting ourselves in creating “buyer personas” but also “audience personas”. Who (persons & websites) are the true influencers of our audience? Create content these influencers want to use and amplify. Involve them in your Digital PR campaigns.
87. What does it mean for us? Factors for choosing the sources. Trustworthiness... aka “listen to your users”, interact with them onsite and offsite, and embrace a product-led SEO strategy.
88. What does it mean for us? Factors for choosing the sources. Content diversity... aka stop considering only “text” as content: long videos, short videos, images, audio/podcasts. And text is not only blog posts and landing pages. Embrace the concept of repurposing.
89. What does it mean for us? Factors for choosing the sources. Relevance over rank... aka detect the search intents and their seasonalities and create content accordingly.
90. What does it mean for us? Factors for choosing the sources. Relevance over rank... also means semantic relevance: do not stress writers about “SEO Copywriting” but urge them to write naturally over a base of expert-led documentation. Natural language naturally leads to semantic correctness.
91. Factors for choosing the sources. User-dependent. Search History.
92. Factors for choosing the sources. User-dependent. Search History. ”Click story” of the user (on SERP).
93. Factors for choosing the sources. User-dependent. Search History. Dwell time (on site). ”Click story” of the user (on SERP).
94. Factors for choosing the sources. User-dependent. Search History. Scrolling behavior (on SERP). ”Click story” of the user (on SERP). Dwell time (on site).
95. Factors for choosing the sources. User-dependent. Search History. Result expansion/Highlighting (on SERP). ”Click story” of the user (on SERP). Dwell time (on site). Scrolling behavior (on SERP).
96. User-dependent. Factors for choosing the sources. Search History. Interaction with Search Features (on SERP). ”Click story” of the user (on SERP). Dwell time (on site). Scrolling behavior (on SERP). Result expansion/Highlighting (on SERP).
97. Related queries. Factors for choosing the sources.
98. Recent queries performed by the user. Factors for choosing the sources.
99. Implied queries. Factors for choosing the sources.
100. What does it mean for us?
101. Factors for choosing the sources. What does it mean for us?
102. Factors for choosing the sources. What does it mean for us? Analyze the Search Journey inside Google and the Messy Middle.
103. Factors for choosing the sources. What does it mean for us? Create/Update the architecture of your website based on that analysis & own the space.
104. Factors for choosing the sources. What does it mean for us? Stop thinking in “One query One click” aka do not fall in the melancholy of the 0-click SERPs. SEO is about Search Journeys and Search Sessions, not single SERPs.
105. E-E-A-T? Experience and Expertise lead to relevance. Relevance leads to Trustworthiness. Trustworthiness leads to Authority. Owning and demonstrating E- E-A-T mean being a “brand”.
106. E-E-A-T? A Brand is a named entity that Google considers an important node in the Knowledge Graph, hence firmly connected to other nodes (i.e.: topics, products) and that have distinctive attributes. All this translates to visibility for the brand when people search about topics/products and related attributes.
107. Does AIO search in real time?
108. NO!
109. It uses the pre-existing training data and the Google’s index.
110. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO?
111. YES and NO
112. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Nothing on Google Search Console.
113. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Tools like Semrush started tracking AIO.
114. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Brightedge is very focused on AIO and uses an approach to tracking it different than other suites.
115. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Extension for Chrome started to be created. This below is probably the most useful.
116. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Extension for Chrome started to be created. This below is probably the most useful.
117. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Ziptie.dev is maybe the most interesting too right now.
118. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Ziptie.dev is maybe the most interesting too right now.
119. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Ziptie.dev is maybe the most interesting too right now.
120. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Ziptie.dev is maybe the most interesting too right now.
121. WHY 3 of 3
122. We have found that with AI Overviews, people use Search more... Liz Reid VP – Head of Search Google
123. Our data are telling us that people click a lot on the sources linked in CoPilot ... Fabrice Canel Principal Program Manager BING
124. Can we track and measure traffic from AIO? Experiments like this one below seem confirming that AIO generates traffic.
125. Google is plagiarizing me! Not refers me! It is stealing my traffic! Many bloggers. How to ”forbid” AIO to show us?
126. How to ”forbid” AIO to show us? https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-overviews https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/snippet#nosnippet
127. What do I recommend to my clients?
128. What do I recommend to my clients?
129. Summary of what we have seen 3 1 2 AIO won’t disappear Don’t be silly Optimize! #WMF2024
130. VOTE FOR THE INTERVENTION ON “IBRIDA”
131. Gianluca Fiorelli International & Strategic SEO Consultant X –LinkedIn IloveSEO.net BRAND, SEO & GENERATIVE SEARCH