Exploring Google’s AI-Powered Search Innovations

Transcription

Hi, I’m Chris Long with Go Fish Digital. And today we’re going to talk about three AI updates that are launching in Google’s search engine. The first and the most major one is what they’re calling “Generative AI”. Google launched this at their Google I/O conference, and what they’re showing is that when a user makes a certain query, an AI-powered snapshot can actually appear in the search results.

They show an example of it here. They searched for “good bike for a 5-mile commute with hills”, and here you see the AI-generated snapshot that pulls in an answer from a large language model. We’re encouraging website owners to really look out for these types of queries as they start launching. How does it impact your click-through rate? What other types of queries does Google suggest? And really take a look at how these queries are impacting any given search result.

Now let’s talk about how Google actually attributes sites in these AI-powered snapshots for Generative AI. In this example, you can see that there are three different websites that Google is referencing. It’s going to be really important for website owners to take note of the different elements Google is pulling in. You can see these are very image-heavy, so it seems that a high-quality image might be a requirement for Google to feel comfortable enough showing this in this more image-heavy type of result. Also, certain text is pulled in here.

Website owners will want to analyze if it’s getting pulled from the title tag or the H1, and how it ties back to the original query. If we can identify queries that respond with generative AI answers, then we can go back and ensure that things like titles and H1s are well-optimized to maximize your site’s ability to appear in these AI-powered snapshots.

The final feature we want to talk about is called Perspectives. This is Google’s attempt at bringing more human-centric content directly into the search experience. Here you can see an example of Perspectives in action. Similar to Maps or Images, it appears as a separate tab that you can click for a given query. In Perspectives, you can find short-form videos, social posts from Reddit and Quora, and other images.

This appears to be Google’s way of differentiating their platform from tools like ChatGPT that don’t have a more humanized experience. It might also be a play to cut into market share from players such as TikTok by emphasizing platforms like YouTube Shorts.

We recommend that website owners take a wait-and-see approach here. Is there data to support or does data come to Search Console that helps you measure this and really see how many users are interacting with this feature? Then from there, you can make a data-informed decision and say, hey, do we need to build out our YouTube Shorts strategy or our social strategy to maximize our chances of being visible in the Perspectives tab?

About Chris Long

Chris Long is the VP of Marketing at Go Fish Digital. With 10+ years of SEO experience, Chris works unique problems and advanced search situations to help clients improve organic traffic through a deep understanding of Google's algorithm and web technology. Chris has advised on the search strategies for clients such as GEICO, Adobe & The New York Times. He is a contributor for Moz, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal. He is also a speaker at industry conferences such as MozCon, SMX East, BrightonSEO and more.