AI Overviews: Google Switches Its Search to AI-Based Answers

In Which Countries Are AI Overviews Being Rolled Out?

AI Overviews are now being rolled out to all Google users in the US, following convincing results from beta phases in over 120 countries. Other countries will follow in the coming weeks, whether the EU and therefore Germany will be included remains to be seen.

Instead of primarily referring to relevant websites on the internet, the in-house language model Gemini will now generate entirely AI-based answers directly on the search results page (SERP). This brings Google a big step closer to its long-standing vision of transforming from a search engine to an answer engine. This significant step can be attributed to the emerging competitive pressure. The enormous hype around Large Language Models and the applications based on them has led to the monopolist Google seeing its business model in danger for the first time in years.

In addition to the well-known applications from Microsoft and OpenAI, there is also, for example, the AI answer machine Perplexity. This has been offering exactly this for several months now and has already fundamentally changed the search behaviour of “early adopters”. Although Perplexity still displays links, these are turned into link boxes, with the AI-generated answers usually sufficient for initial product discovery or topic search. However, currently, Perplexity is certainly still niche, while Google’s search is used worldwide by 4 billion people.

What Added Value Do AI Overviews Provide for Google Users?

The integration of AI Overviews is designed to directly answer users’ questions, generating not just text but also curating images, maps, and videos, without users having to leave the SERP to get an answer. The well-known organic search results are sometimes completely pushed out of the visible screen by the integration of the AI Overviews. Google’s promise is: “Google will do the Googling for you”, as users no longer need to click on different websites to get their question answered. From a user’s perspective, this is certainly a huge efficiency gain for certain search queries. If the question is not directly satisfactorily answered or follow-up questions arise, the AI can be communicated with directly on the SERP in chat.

AI Overviews: "Google will do the Googling for you."

In my estimation, simplicity will win for users, as long as the quality of the generated answers is consistently high.

How Can Users Know Which Sources the AI-Generated Answers Refer to?

The links to the sources are prominently displayed in the generated answer, so if you do not trust the generated answer directly, or want to delve deeper into a topic, you still have the option to click on one of the sources.

What Changes for Providers in Digital Commerce Or the Media Sector?

For providers in digital commerce, in the media sector, and in comparable industries, whose business models depend on regular Google traffic, several urgent questions arise due to the biggest Google change of all time.

• How does our content make it into the sources of the AI Overviews?

At Google I/O, it was mentioned that the placed links in the AI Overviews received up to 25% more traffic compared to the previous, conventional organic search results. This statement is strongly doubted in the global SEO scene and certainly depends on the type of search query. However, numerous studies conducted in recent months show a completely different picture and even Gartner expects 25% less organic traffic to be distributed by Google to the websites by 2026.

This affects digital commerce and the media sector more than ever, which have lost significant organic traffic since the beginning of the year due to numerous previous Google updates (see Sistrix or Growth Memo by Kevin Indig).

Overall, the online search will be greatly transformed by AI Overviews. Providers in all industries are therefore well advised to deal with it. What exactly the “new SEO” will look like remains to be seen. However, there are already initial insights here. Those who hoped that good rankings in the old Google world would lead to being well placed in AI Overviews are mistaken, as a study by Autoritas clearly shows. It therefore remains to be seen what insights can be gained in the coming weeks and months.

• What happens to the “normal” rankings in the SERP?

The usual placed links remain, but they are sometimes massively pushed down and thus out of the visible screen by the display of the AI Overviews. This means that click-through rates (CTR) will decrease significantly and thus lead to significantly less traffic.

Search results as we know them are losing value

Since Google is by far the largest traffic channel for the vast majority of all digital commerce or publisher sites, now is the time to deal with the changes. Not only in the SEO and content department, but at board level. As a loss of traffic will lead to significant drops in sales, one should not miss the boat here and not react to the new reality. At the same time, it presents a huge opportunity for others to gain market share from competitors. As with any change, there will be winners and losers.

• Are AI Overviews played out with every search?

The short answer is: no. Currently, the display of AI Overviews is handled differently by Google. While AI Overviews are generated by default for some search queries, there is an interim step for others. The AI is only activated by clicking the “generate” button after the user gives the command. In particularly sensitive searches, such as in the health sector, Google largely refrains from displaying them. How this ratio will develop in the future remains to be seen.

• Will media and digital commerce be equally affected?

Again, various studies over the past few months show a clear picture. In digital commerce, the quota of AI Overviews being played out was sometimes over 90%, so it is expected that digital commerce will be the industry most affected by this change. In my opinion, this is due to several reasons. Firstly, Google has an extremely good data base in this industry on which the AI models can be trained, namely the Merchant Centers of all Google Ads customers, which contain the structured data for almost every product that can be bought on the internet. Another reason is the strong competition with Amazon. In recent years, Amazon has managed to get purchase-related searches (over 50%) conducted directly on Amazon, rather than taking the detour via Google. The new possibilities offer Google the chance to win back purchase-interested users and lost digital commerce budgets.

The effects on the media environment are certainly harder to predict. On the one hand, publishers rely on Google’s organic traffic, as this is by far the largest traffic channel for most publisher sites. Conversely, Google relies on the content of the publishers to have it processed by the AI. This already difficult relationship between the two parties in the past will certainly pick up speed again due to the latest developments and will certainly also occupy the courts in various countries. So it remains exciting.

What Should, No, Must Digital Commerce Companies Do Now?

First, the issue and urgency need to be communicated at decision-maker level. The potential revenues that could be at risk can be quickly illustrated on this calculator.

While in the past the full attention of SEO teams and agencies was focused on optimising category pages, this must now be placed on product detail pages (PDP). This is because users will do a large part of their product discovery directly on Google and only then jump to the respective provider when they already have a good overview of the products on offer. The PDP will increasingly become the only touchpoint with potential customers. So the last questions before purchase must be well anticipated and appropriately prepared. Only those who manage to hit the buying intent of the users will be successful in the long term.

Google has been preaching for years that high-quality content that offers real added value to users will be rewarded with organic traffic from Google in the long term. This principle will not change in the future either. Therefore, it is extremely important to pay attention to the quality and added value of the content created. Since the mere creation of content even in large quantities has been no longer an art since the introduction of various LLMs (Large Language Models), it is all the more important to differentiate from this and to transport (product) know-how and to focus on the customers, whether machine or manually created content. Keyword “helpful content”.

Reviews or user-generated content are gaining significantly in relevance and are sometimes played out directly in the AI Overviews, so digital commerce managers should think about how reviews for products can be prominently displayed and well curated on the product detail page based on the buying intent.

The continuous optimisation of the content based on KPIs such as visibility, conversion rates, bounce rates, etc. will become even more important. Thus, the content strategy should be regularly reviewed and adjusted – always with a focus on the product detail page.

AI Overviews As a Challenge – And As an Opportunity

AI Overviews present marketing, content and SEO managers with new challenges, but at the same time also offer new opportunities. By focusing on high-quality, user-centred content and optimising for buyer intent, companies in digital commerce, the media sector, publishers and publishers can effectively increase their visibility and reach in Google search.

If you have any questions about AI Overviews or targeted content production, please do not hesitate to contact us. Talk to us – our experts will be happy to get in touch with you!