SEO vs SGE

Search Generative Experience

SEO vs SGE. In a world where everything can be generated with AI, what is valuable is that in the end, when a Blog can be generated you can get ChatGPT to answer everything.   Sora AI is coming out. 

If you’re a business and you rely on Google or SEO; to have a business it’s going to change but it’s also going to be okay.  In November of 2022, Chat GPT changed everything.  They showed the world that there’s another way to find answers and interact with technology other than just searching into Google and this pushed Google to finally update their search engine from that iconic list of Blue Links that we’ve had forever. 

In May Google started testing their new version of search called Search Generative Experience.  It was only within Google Labs and only available to those in the United States who opted in until now.

The term Search Generative Experience may sound like some novelty upgrade for a pixel tablet, but it’s going to change everything to do with how we search and look up information and find businesses.  But the real question is what does the new Search Generative Experience even look like and how could it affect businesses and web traffic?

The fundamental change that SGE is going to have instead of the giant list of Blue Links and then the ads at the top of Google, users can immediately receive a well-represented AI generated answer without ever having to click on another website.  With SGE, when you type in a question or keyword into Google depending on what you want to know.  The top part of the page is going to be a generative answer from AI with additional follow-up questions sometimes that you can click on or know you can chat with directly with another follow-up question.

Whenever you type in a question, now there are a few other questions with little snippets.  They’re still recommending those questions but now integrated in chat you’ll notice the AI answers.  There will also be a carousel of a few trusted links.  If you search for something product it will have a carousel of products and then depending on what you’re looking for there could be a row of ads underneath or even maybe one day integrated into the AI answers and underneath that you still see a few links and then YouTube videos or you may see ads on the side. 

They’re currently testing SGE.  There’s no standard format yet and these are just some of the things that people have noticed.

This naturally brings up two questions.

1.     how will this affect businesses and

2.     websites.

Well from what research shows so far, Google SGE is expected to reduce organic traffic significantly to websites and that’s because Searchers are now going to be able to get a direct Google AI generated answer.

Since SGE is still in testing we really can’t know the exact implications yet, but it is reasonable to assume that we should expect to see a 30% decrease which happened when they launched Snippets. 

There is a bright side.  There is a massive, big bright side, especially for those not currently in the top few Blue Links. 

That’s because AI generated answers and the links that it shows do not match. What normally shows up in the organic results 94% of the time.  This means there’s a massive opportunity for those not currently ranking in Google to implement new strategies to rank. 

Instead of focusing on SEO, focus on Generative Engine Optimisation. 

My tip is when you’re looking and testing out SGE you need to write down all the questions that you see, and all the follow-up questions that it suggests and you’re going to make content that is much more niche and specific to those blogger tail keywords.  You can do this in an FAQ section on your site or make a Blog or short blog for each.

More information on this will be shared soon.

If you want to get ahead of the Search Generative Experience algorithm and stay relevant, book a consultation with Yasien.