Did you know AI Overviews Are Taking Over Google Search, What It Means for Publishers and Rankings

 

According to a new study from ZipTie, 18% of the search results on Google AI Overviews are related to publisher search queries. This data was obtained after analyzing 500,000 queries across different sectors, and it was found that there is a decrease in importance of traditional search rankings as AI Overviews are dominating now. The data also found that 63% of the sources that AI Overviews have cited in its answers are not from top ten search results on Google. This shows that there is a change in strategies on Google and it no longer shows pages that are most relevant to the search in traditional search results. AI Overviews give the answers which match best with the queries, which is different from traditional results.

The analysis also found out which keywords or queries trigger AI Overviews to appear the most. It was found that “how much” related questions (54%) trigger the most AI Overviews, followed by “what is” related queries (39%) and reviews related queries (9%). This study also shows that many of the AI Overviews are also showing YouTube videos in their search results, which is making publishers rethink their video strategies.

 The study also showed that AI Overviews are constantly showing the same publishers too even when the queries on Google are not related to the content they publish. For example, AI Overviews are often citing Business Insider even when there are search queries related to celebrity news or Times of India being cited on search queries which are related to health. This shows that even if you are a publisher who has an authority on a certain topic, it doesn’t mean that you can get featured on AI Overviews. You have to change some of your strategies and work according to Google to make your website appear at the top results and in AI Overviews.

Now going forward, even though AI Overviews are available in about 100 countries, they are still limited in EU countries because of some regulations. AI Overviews are going to grow more in upcoming days, but there are two things that could slow it down. One is that Google cannot make AI Overviews available for everyone as it can affect the user satisfaction rate, and another is Google adding ads on its AI-powered search results.