What is Generative AI? How will it affect website ranking (Website Ranking) and traffic? Let’s understand how Google AI Overviews are affecting our websites, including the challenges and opportunities in maintaining website visibility, which is essential for brands and businesses alike!
What is Generative AI?
Generative AI, or generative artificial intelligence, is an AI technology that can automatically create new content, data, or media by learning from existing data. What does Generative AI do? For example:
How is Generative AI used?
Currently, Generative AI is being applied in many areas, such as:
- Creating marketing content, such as advertising copy and articles.
- Product design
- Writing computer code
- Language translation
- Creating virtual images and videos
One of the applications being talked about for SEO is Google Generative AI SEO, which is having a significant impact on SEO and website ranking.
Impact of Google Generative AI SEO
Before we get to know the impact of using AI in Google’s SEO, let’s go back in time a bit.
In 1901, Wilbur Wright told his brother Orville that humans would not be able to fly for another 50 years, but just two years later, in 1903, the brothers successfully built the first airplane in the world. Similarly, the evolution of search has seen new technologies emerge, but we still have to wait and see when these technologies will be ready to “fly.”
Now Google has announced that AI Overviews have a higher click-through rate than regular web search results. Google AI Overviews are appearing in 15% of all search queries, which is down from the previous 84%, but how does Generative AI affect Website Traffic?
Organic, Direct, Referral, and Affiliate Traffic Will Decrease
Search results will increase, but websites will be affected and have less overall Organic Traffic. There are rough estimates as follows:
- AI increases search 6 times per day
- AI reduces average click-through rate (CTR) by 60%
- May reduce Organic Traffic by 30%
Of course, every website will be affected. Gilad David Maayan, CEO and founder of Agile SEO, analyzed the decline in traffic from 23 websites after Google launched AI Overviews in his study. After Google AI Overviews were launched, the Organic Traffic of these websites decreased by 18-64%. That means only a few link cards will be displayed, which may cause small companies to drop out of search results to make way for large brands.
These link cards may replace Featured Snippets, but Google confirms that Featured Snippets will still not disappear (for now). Which isn’t surprising, because Google itself has been testing the Featured Snippets feature for many years.
This has led many SEOs to see fluctuations in the ranking of Featured Snippets on their websites in recent months.
Reduced Crawling = Less Content Will Be Indexed
Currently, Google is facing structural challenges because the amount of content that Google needs to crawl, render, and index is enormous and constantly growing. Coupled with AI-written content that Google Data Centers cannot handle, Google is taking shortcuts by reducing crawling budgets for websites with high content creation rates compared to credibility levels. This means that if our website has generic content that doesn’t seem useful, Google may not index it at all.
Think about it, many content creators are uploading similar AI-generated content to their websites, resulting in a lot of spam and duplicate content. When Search Engines detect similarities in content across various websites, they categorize it as non-original or Duplicate Content. Currently, the best way to make Google see your content is to write content based on experience, expertise, and personal opinions, which AI cannot do.
AI May Increase Searches and Make Website Rankings More Volatile
Going back to 2016 when Google announced Mobile-first Indexing, it caused a lot of turmoil in the SEO community, with some predicting that searches would decrease and people would stop using computers. In reality, mobile search increased, similar to the situation with AI now. User behavior changes constantly, and as people learn and adapt to Google Generative AI, the search methods will change. It is possible that the growth of AI will increase the volume of searches, and as searches increase, the volatility of rankings will also increase.
More Advertising Space Means Lower CPC
Searchers will see Google Ads above Google AI Overviews, resulting in increased revenue for Google. During this period, Google’s advertising revenue has almost decreased by 4%, and advertising revenue is Google’s main source of income, so it’s not surprising that Google AI Overviews will focus on increasing advertising revenue. Of course, more Google Ads will lead to lower CPC in the long run. SEOs must adapt accordingly.
Leads Are Higher Quality But Fewer in Number
Although Google AI Overviews may reduce traffic to websites, businesses will begin to see higher quality traffic. As Google says, “Let Google do the searching for you.” This means Google will ask more questions to help provide the best search results for that query. Google AI Overviews aim to improve search and make it easier for users to find what they need, which may take longer for users to reach our websites, but if our content is relevant, high-quality, and helpful, searchers who come to our website are likely to be higher-quality leads.
People Will Spend More Time on Google and Find Other Ways to Search
With the arrival of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Bing, we will see changes in how users search. And Google AI Overviews have introduced a new way of searching. This major shift means people may spend more time on Google or try other search engines. Therefore, it is important to ensure that we have set up Cross-Network Traching Pixels on our website to collect more comprehensive data and focus on creating content clusters to answer in-depth related questions.
Review Websites Are at Risk
Review websites are heavily impacted by Google AI Overviews. With its ability to generate product recommendation texts like real people write, users spend more time on Google. When a product recommendation is created, Google directs users directly to the retailer’s website, allowing them to purchase the product immediately. This means review websites will lose Affiliate Traffic significantly.
If you own a review website, it’s time to reassess your strategy. Because the goal of AI Overviews is to improve the user search experience by finding what they need quickly, which pushes review websites out of search results.
Intent Label Must Match Search Query to Increase Content Personalization
Attaching Search Query Intent Labels (e.g., Solutions or Blogs, etc.) to websites allows website owners to train AI to remember patterns of queries related to those datasets. This is called “Learned Intent.” Using the ability to learn search intent of AI helps personalize content to meet user needs, creating more interesting content for users.
Summary of Generative AI Impact
The number of traffic and website rankings may be affected by the growth of AI. Search results may worsen, and rankings may become more volatile. It is true that Generative AI will be with us for a long time, so “overcoming” and boosting SEO rankings will not just be about following “best practices” anymore. Website owners, SEOs, and digital marketers must “experiment” and “test” continuously to see what works best for their websites.
About Relevant Audience
We are Relevant Audience, a Digital Performance Marketing Agency specializing in SEO and one of the Digital Agency providing complete digital marketing services to support businesses in reaching target audiences at the right time, place, and device (Right Time, Right Place, Right Device).
Our services cover SEO services, Search Marketing, Social Media Ads, Search Ads, to Influencer Marketing, and we are also a SEO Company that is Google Partners. Our team consists of specialists ready to provide consultation and find solutions that meet business needs.
Contact for more information, consult online marketing
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Email: info@relevantaudience.com
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