Welcome to another insightful week with The SEOs Diners Club newsletter. Leveraging over a decade of SEO expertise, I aim to distill the week's most critical developments into a concise read that will take less than seven minutes. Let's dive into the insights that matter.

AI Overviews from Google and Their Impact on SEO: A New Era Begins

Google is revolutionizing the SEO world with its new documentation called AI Overviews.

We have officially entered a new era of search. Starting this week, Google is fully incorporating AI Overviews into the search experience in US search results.

As SEO professionals, we've been waiting to see if Google would implement the Search Generative Experience (SSE).

At this week's I/O event, Google announced that AI Overviews will be fully rolled out in the US and more countries. Google is fully committed to the new experience, regardless of its impact on search quality.

If you're new to this news, here's some vital information you should know about Google's AI Overviews:

• AI Overviews are LLM-powered snapshots at the top of search results. They use Google Gemini to create a direct response for users on the search results page.

• These results are intended to help users conduct longer searches. Think of searches for a specific need that has never been written about. Google uses an example where a user searches, “Find the best yoga or pilates studio in Boston and tell me about promotional offers.”

• AI Overviews respond directly to queries, including citations to websites that helped create the answer. This is likely part of their training to make the AI-powered response.

• The data shows that websites that rank first in organic results don't always match the AI Overviews. Even if your site is on the first page for a query, it doesn't mean it's more likely to appear in an AI Overview for the same query.

• Google claims that websites appearing in AI Overviews “get more clicks than if the page appeared as a traditional web listing for that query.” (I find this hard to believe, I note!)

• AI Overviews can be automatically generated after a search or can be on-demand. The latter experience includes a “Create” button that users must click to trigger the overview.

• It is still unclear how Google plans to monetize this experience. It's no secret that they must determine how to get ads into these new search results.

• Google will provide data in the Search Console about the clicks and impressions your site's AI Summaries receive. However, it won't distinguish whether the data came from a result of AI Overviews. We know that Bing Webmaster Tools offers performance that includes AI conversations without going into too much detail in the performance section.

You may find below the link to the Google reference page of AI Overviews:

Let's examine it in a little more detail:

How Do AI Overviews Work?

This feature can lead to a loss of organic traffic for informational websites, video content producers, e-commerce stores, and other businesses. It has been observed that it rarely appears in search queries that trigger ads. I predict that Google will keep this at the forefront not to jeopardize advertising revenues.

Which Sites Will Be Affected?

AI Overviews don't seem to be limited to sites that provide information. According to Google's documentation, this new feature will also affect publishers, content producers, retailers, and businesses. This emphasizes the need for a paradigm shift in SEO strategies.

Automatic Inclusion

This new feature will include sites optimized for Google's standard search index. Google states that AI Summaries have no special filtering. It seems like it will be enough to follow Google's search guidelines. Of course, the next race appears to be for a place in the AI Overviews.

Exclude Your Site or Any Page

I don't think this is a good idea; you can use the “nosnippet” meta-robot tag if you don’t want to appear in AI Overviews.

Topic Targeting and Semantic Annotation

Google uses various techniques to tag your content according to topics. Semantic annotation associates page content with concepts, allowing Google to make sense of pages. This method, which has been used since 2015, is supported by AI innovations such as RankBrain and neural matching. These technologies are essential in understanding the context of queries and pages.

AI Overviews also uses semantic annotation to connect topics and websites. This makes it easy to infer that semantic SEO was important before but has now become vital.

New Era in SEO Strategies

This new era for SEO experts requires focusing on topic targeting and keyword-oriented strategies. We must abandon old-school SEO practices and adapt quickly to this new era.

If you want to make a start, you can join Google's free productive AI course, which I mentioned in the next topic.

Free Generative AI Training from Google

Learn the core concepts of productive AI with Google Cloud's “Introduction to Productive AI” certification program. Sign up now!

Google's AI Overviews announced at I/O are one of the most significant changes we've seen recently, and most SEOs have no idea how they work. Don't be one of those people!

You can spend a few hours completing this free Generative AI course from Google. You will get a minor certificate and understand why most of ChatGPT's SEO advice is useless. I attended this course this week and got my certificate. The first thing I learned was how often and incorrectly we use the term “AI” 🙂 

Track AI Overviews with Semrush

As of May 17th, we can track Google's US-located AI Overviews via Semrush Sensor and Position Tracking modules.

Semrush allows you to track Google's AI Overviews with Position Tracking and Sensor tools. With Semrush Position Tracking, you can track how visible your US-targeted site is in these summaries, and with Sensor, you can track the impact of AI Overviews in various industries. These features will help you optimize your SEO strategies, especially if you have a US-targeted site.

Semrush Sensor:

Semrush Position Tracking:

SEO expert Brodie Clark is notorious for tracking SERP features. Using this feature, he shared his first impressions of AI Overviews in the US on Twitter:

- They appear in 0.55% of searches on desktop and 0.81% on mobile

- Featured Snippets decreased very slightly on mobile today (from 4.82% to 4.67%) but remained unchanged on desktop

- 'Health' and 'People & Society' were the categories with the highest number of AI reviews on mobile, with 4.64% and 4.87%, respectively

*Featured snippets increased for 'Health' and decreased for 'People and Society' on launch day

- Some categories such as 'Shopping,' 'Arts & Entertainment'’ and 'Food & Drink' do not yet have AI summaries on both devices.

Overall, AI Overviews are relatively low-visibility SERP features in the US. They can expect to be less relevant for ad-triggered search queries. I hope Google will do a lot of testing in this area in the coming weeks.

Use FAQs on Product and Category Pages of Your E-commerce Site

Adding FAQs to product and category pages can improve user experience and reduce customer return rates. With the right strategy, you can also increase your conversion rates.

Adding frequently asked questions (FAQs) to product and category pages effectively enhances user experience and improves conversion rates.

FAQs provide quick solutions to common customer problems, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing return rates. Live chat transcripts, potential customer questions from Google results, and data from customer service emails are good starting points for creating FAQs.

FAQs on product pages provide users with clear information about the product and speed up purchasing decisions. On category pages, they include information about the general features and uses of similar products, making it easier for them to find the right product. For example, in the fashion industry, information such as size fit, style suggestions, and care instructions can help customers choose the right product.

You can use services like Alsoasked to compile potential customer questions that appear in Google results.

Adding FAQs improves SEO performance and strengthens customer trust and brand loyalty. Content that meets users' needs and adds value helps them build long-term relationships with the brand.

2024 E-E-A-T and Knowledge Graph Update from Google

Jason Barnard's article discusses what Google added to the Knowledge Graph with the 2024 E-E-A-T update and its impact on SEO.

According to Jason Barnard's article in Search Engine Land, Google's 2024 E-E-A-T update significantly changed the Knowledge Graph.

Google aims to deliver reliable information by applying E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Competence, Trustworthiness) signals specifically to person assets.

According to Barnard, in March 2024, people assets in the Knowledge Graph increased by 17%. This increase includes information from trusted sources such as researchers, authors, and journalists. As reliance on traditional sources such as Wikipedia decreases, the importance of verified digital assets increases.

The foundation of modern SEO is educating Google about your assets: website owner, content creators, company, founder, CEO, products, etc.

Without creating a meaningful understanding in Google's “brain” about who you are, what you offer, and why you are the most trusted solution, you can no longer participate in the “Google game.”

You can only successfully feed Google's Knowledge Graphs with facts, not strings, in a world of things. Google will have the essential tools it needs to reliably understand what problems you are best at solving in the market for the subset of its users, your target audience.

Knowledge is power. In modern SEO, the ability to feed Knowledge Algorithms is the path to success.

Recommended Tools & Services

• WhitePress: WhitePress is a content marketing platform that enables accessible article publishing across 90,571 websites in 30 languages, offering native copywriting and automated global publication services.

• Cannibalization Explorer Looker Studio Report is a tool for identifying keyword cannibalization and providing insights into how keywords perform across different pages.

• SurferSEO is a tool that helps you create and optimize content for SEO. It analyzes the top-ranking pages for your target keywords and gives you suggestions on how to improve your content. Surfer AI also has a feature that can generate ready-to-rank articles in minutes.

• Copilot Pro: Copilot Pro is available for $20/month for cloud-based GenAI models and $27/month with Microsoft 365. It is integrated with Microsoft 365 applications and provides access to GPT-4 Turbo and advanced AI rendering tools.

• AlsoAsked is a helpful tool that can boost your visibility in the “People Also Ask” section of Google's search engine results pages.

• Semrush Map Rank Tracker is a game-changing tool for local businesses looking to dominate their niche and attract more customers. I've been using the free version for a while now, and I'm impressed with its ease and effectiveness.

• ContentShake AI is an intelligent writing tool that combines AI with real-life competitor insights. It guides you from ideation to publishing directly to the blog, generates SEO-friendly articles, and helps you optimize them for organic traffic and engagement.

• Microsoft Clarity has recently introduced a feature called Copilot, which incorporates Generative AI through Large Language Models (LLMs) into the analytics tool. This integration aims to make data more accessible and understandable for users by leveraging the same technology created by OpenAI, which powers the new Bing or ChatGPT.

• InLinks is an SEO tool that uses a knowledge graph to optimize content for search engines. It automates internal linking and schema markup, simplifying SEO processes and content strategies.

Subscribe to my newsletter to stay informed about the latest in SEO and digital marketing. Next week, I'll continue to share the newest insights, tactics, and strategies for navigating the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape.

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Best,

Mert