What SEO Experts Have To Say About Leveraging SGE In 2024
Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) has come a long way since its experimental launch in May 2023.
Having started out by simply producing concise snippets for search engine queries, SGE now offers more comprehensive summaries and source links.
necessarily, Google's SGE is an interactive Generic AI-powered feature Which uses existing results to answer search queries.
Think of it as a chatbot – but with Google's organic search results powering it.
Every indexed webpage that crosses a search engine results page (SERP) helps teach the SGE what it knows.
As exciting (and partly scary) as this feature is, you may be trying to understand its true potential to leverage it for your businesses.
How does Google SGE work?
SGE provides comprehensive answers to search queries, similar to Open AI's ChatGPT, but SGE cites sources.
To see SGE in action:
- Navigate to Google to start a search.
- Enter a search query or question in the search bar.
- See how many search results are written as conversational answers to your question.
Context and more information is added to your results through SGE, especially when compared to the older Featured Snippets, which only displayed a snippet or sentence without its full context.
As you can see, the pre-SGE days allowed you to scrape multiple websites, with each result driving traffic to their respective webpages.
Now, SGE takes over the space where direct webpage results used to be displayed, meaning many websites may no longer get the traffic they used to.
How will SGE change how Google search works?
As you can imagine, many SEO experts believe that SGE will eat up organic traffic from top-of-funnel queries.
There are three major reasons for a potential decline in organic traffic from SERPs:
- Featured snippets only provide one clickable source, while SGE provides several. If you're in the top position, you'll now be sharing clicks with multiple sources.
- SGE takes up too much space on the SERPs, pushing traditional SERPs below the bottom, resulting in fewer clicks.
- You can ask follow-up questions directly, which keeps searchers on the SERP instead of having to visit a site for more information.
That said, pages are still likely to get traffic as long as the content answers the query.
SGE site pages not in top 10
There are several instances where SGE cites pages that do not rank in the top 10 results – indicating that the data is collected from a larger sample.
However, you should adapt your strategy as SGE emerges from its experimental phase.
A recent study found that 49% of consumers are interested in AI-powered searches, indicating that AI-generated SERPs are viewed positively.
If Google wants to remain competitive, especially with Bing Search's strong comeback last year, SGE will eventually be a permanent part of the SERPs.
What do SEO experts say about the impact of SGE on digital marketing?
Many businesses, like yours, depend on Google for their revenue. Be it in the form of ads or organic results, SGE is set to disrupt both these formats.
How does SGE affect organic traffic
On the organic side, achieving top 3 positions can lead to disappointing results.
How does SGE affect PPC
At the end of the advertisement, you can be safe, as the sponsored results appear above the SGE.
However, this only pushes the organic results down even further.
Screenshot from Google for (Monday Contestants), February 2024Some experts believe that SGE is like Featured Snippets but on steroids. Ihor Rudnik, CEO of Collaborator, explains:
We saw sites that provided simple and fast answers lose some of their traffic. This is because users get these answers directly in the SERPs. For example, weather forecast, currency rates, short facts etc.
Businesses that focus on short, easy answers and quick information are in the worst position. I don't understand how you can change this without creating additional value for users. However, it is easy to predict that the importance of brand awareness and direct traffic will continue to increase.
Additionally, there will be more focus on creating in-depth pages. This may be in the form of original data, a different perspective, or commentary on trends.
SEO professionals will begin to be more quality-focused, and quality will be defined as bringing something new, original or interesting to the debate, as opposed to something that is now defined – 'comprehensive' (covering the same thing boringly Code to do) The next guy does).
-Patrick Herbert, Director of Singularity Digital
What can you do to leverage SGE for your business?
So, how can you prepare to stay relevant on the SERPs as SGEs soon take over?
Here are a few tips to get you started:
1. Move from informational to transactional content
SGEs pose the greatest threat to informational content – especially concise content.
Businesses that create thin content optimized for search will suffer. Creating more transactional pages can help you avoid this problem.
Transactional content is more nuanced and requires extensive research, so users will be more likely to delve deeper into product/service websites.
Not only that, but it also allows you to appear in SGE for high-intent search terms, which is what businesses are aiming for.
Screenshot from Google for (Best Accounting Software), February 20242. Monitor changes in search intent over a period
Many marketers will soon shift their reliance on traditional keyword metrics like keyword density (KD) and search volume to search intent.
Even with high KD and search volume, ranking for these keywords can be difficult. So, as with SGE, there is no point in pursuing such questions unless you are ready to write the ultimate in-depth guide.
This is why you need to look at search intent first.
ask yourself:
- Does the topic make sense?
- Can I actually rank for this subject or at least get credit by SGE?
