Keeping pace with Bing’s Copilot and Microsoft’s integration of OpenAI into tools and search, Google have been beavering away on their own AI answer machine. Overall, it doesn’t look like good news for publishers that rely on organic traffic.
In a study by by Authoritas, mainly focusing on brand and product terms, it was determined that Google’s SGE (in simple terms, giving AI answers to search-based queries) responded to 92% of all brand and product-based queries with an AI answer. The study had a reasonable sample size, looking at around 3,000 keywords across 15 different verticals and covering 251 mainly U.S. brands.
Google, in the past week of March 22 2024, have started rolling out these SGE answers to a subset of search traffic in the U.S. (Note: As of April 2024, these generative AI answers now populate most Google search queries). The answers will aim to satisfy searches where users would typically visit multiple pages, e.g. “how can I remove red wine from my t-shirt“, where you’d expect a user to check solutions from multiple sources. The aim of this test is to get real-world data on how it affects users and engagement. If you are so inclined, you can also opt-in to the SGE to check it out yourself.
Put simply, for publishers this means fewer clicks, fewer website visitors and likely fewer on-site conversions from interested customers. As a not-so-silver lining, around 50% of the SGE results featured paid search ad inserts. I predicted as much nearly a year ago when Bard first hit the scene – so, while not unexpected, it does mark a shift from Google sending people to websites for free. Now, not only will they be reducing the amount of traffic that leaves Google.com, you’ll also have to pay for the privilege to display content you’ve already spent money on producing. When you have Google’s VP of Search and Ads hitting the alarm because search queries aren’t growing, the drive to increase time on site and lower passthrough traffic to third-party sites is likely strong at Google right now.
The study by Authoritas quite clearly warned website owners to expect “erosion of traffic levels”. Yikes.
As expected, some of the familiar faces come out on top with SGE in play. Genuinely authoritative sites like Wikipedia naturally feature highly in results, while user-generated content in our old friend Quora also ranked highly for some reason. Maybe Quora is ahead of the game in requiring users to pay to see answers with their new Quora+ subscription. You can also get paid to answer Quora questions now, so add that to your bag of potential side hustles.
How third-party sites might be affected by SGE
There is some slightly good news that comes out of the study for smaller and third-party sites, especially in light of quite literal decimation by the March 2024 Google Core Update. Evaluating results, it was found that 62% of the generative links produced by SGE came from websites outside of top 10 ranking organic domains. Around 20% of generative URLs directly matched a page 1 organic URL and 18% showed a different URL from the same organic domain. So there’s an increased likelihood of third-party sites ranking for branded keyword and product searches. The exact criteria for non-top results being chosen in SGE remain a mystery right now. Perhaps some data scientist will figure it out and let us all know.
Read more: Strategies for publishers to deal with SGE
You can read Authoritas’ original study here: SGE Research Study – The Impact of Google Search Generative Experience on Brand and Product Terms
With more than 20 years of publishing experience and formal study to an MA level, Adam is an expert in digital publishing strategies. Adam is the founder and lead consultant at Alphamorr, where he helps digital publishers and media groups to set and achieve their goals. Adam’s experience includes leading sales team in fast-growing organizations covering Adtech for some of the largest websites in the world & enterprise software deployed with world-leading organizations, both public and private.
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