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Google’s AI Overviews The New Search Barry Adams 06 May 2025

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Barry Adams ➢ Active in SEO since 1998 ➢ Specialist in SEO for News Publishers ➢ Newsletter: SEOforGoogleNews.com ➢ Co-founder of the News & Editorial SEO Summit

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I’ve Worked With…

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AI Overviews

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AI Overviews launched in May 2024

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Summarised answers at the top of a search result

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AI Overviews are made by Generative AI • Using Google’s own ‘Gemini’ Large Language Model • ‘Multi-step reasoning capabilities’ • But... not 100% accurate; ➢ All LLMs ‘hallucinate’ – make things up ➢ It’s because they’re not ‘real’ AI ➢ LLMs are super-advanced word predictors; -‘Probabilistic autocomplete’

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LLM with Search + Grounding ‘Grounding’ = Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) ‘Grounding’ LLM Question Search engine Grounded answers with links

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Source Attribution

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Up to 10 Source links

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Sources in AI Overviews https://www.sistrix.com/blog/ai-vs-seo-what-does-the- future-of-search-look-like/

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AI Overviews always cite sources • AI Overviews have at least 1 cited source link; ➢ Every segment in an AI Overview will have a source link ➢ Average number of cited links: 6 -Sidebar on Desktop, carousel on Mobile ➢ Most cited links are pages ranked on the 1st page

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AI Overviews are still rolling out

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AI Overviews in Europe • Austria • Belgium • Germany • Ireland • Italy • Poland • Portugal • Spain • Switzerland • United Kingdom Currently active in:

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AI Overviews in Europe https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/04/01/googles-ai-feature- on-hold-in-most-eu-member-states-due-to-strict-rules

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AI Overviews in Europe ‘The flurry of EU tech rules including the AI Act, Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), “hold back the launch of innovative features” leading to concerns around product innovation. “The EU is behind when it comes to product innovation, and users in Europe will have a less good product experience.”’

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AIO does not appear for news queries* * With very few exceptions

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AI Overviews and News • Theory: AIO and QDF are mutually exclusive; ➢ QDF: Query Deserves Freshness ➢ QDF is a query/topic classifier that triggers a Top Stories box ➢ QDF != AIO

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Google Says… https://blog.google/products/search/ai-overviews-update-may-2024/

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Google Says… “…we aim to not show AI Overviews for hard news topics, where freshness and factuality are important” https://blog.google/products/search/ai-overviews-update-may-2024/

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Optimising for AI Overviews • Many cited sources in AI Overviews do not rank on the first page of Google’s regular results • AI Overviews cast a broader net than regular Google results https://ziptie.dev/blog/state-of-ai-overviews-5-google- aio-disruptions-found-after-analyzing-500k-queries/

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Content Segmentation / ‘Chunking’ • Divide your articles into concrete paragraphs/sections; ➢ Provide a strong subheading to introduce the section ➢ Phrase the subheading as a question • Each paragraph/section should have its own topical focus; ➢ Minimise the mention of other topics/entities in a section • Increases probability the page is used as a cited source; ➢ If the paragraph/section aligns with the user’s prompt query ➢ Taps into LLMs’ RAG/Grounding behaviours

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Key factors for showing in AI Overviews • Quality • Relevancy • Authority • Accuracy ‘Classic’ SEO signals

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AI Overviews’ Impact on Traffic? https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks/

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AI Overviews = Lower CTR • Despite Google’s claims, AI Overviews send less traffic to websites; ➢ Users find the answer directly in the AI Overview • The good news..? ➢ AI seems to generate more search queries on Google

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AI Mode

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Fighting against AI Overviews? • Prevent your content from being used to train Google’s Gemini LLM: User-agent: Googlebot-Extended Disallow: / • Probably a good idea; ➢ Prevents your copyrighted content from being used

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Fighting against AI Overviews? • Prevent your webpages from being linked as a source in an AI Overview: • Probably a bad idea; ➢ Also impacts presentation in all other Google surfaces

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What about the other AIs?

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AI Search Engines

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Search Equivalent Queries on ChatGPT

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https://sparktoro.com/blog/new-research-google-search-grew- 20-in-2024-receives-373x-more-searches-than-chatgpt/

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Traffic from AI Search Engines https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-traffic-study/

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Proposal for llms.txt https://llmstxt.org/

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Want to confuse the AIs? https://blog.cloudflare.com/ai-labyrinth/

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Optimising for AI Search • LLMs need to crawl the web; ➢ Technical SEO principles for crawling and indexing • LLMs ingest content; ➢ On-page SEO principles for relevancy • LLMs focus on relevancy and brand signals; ➢ Off-page SEO principles for authority

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Key factors for showing up in AI Search • Quality • Relevancy • Authority • Accuracy ‘Classic’ SEO signals

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Is it AEO? GEO? AIEO? It’s still SEO.

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Summarised

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AI Search will not replace classic search • Google’s AI Overviews are an evolution; ➢ There will be some traffic loss ➢ Focus on building strong brand signals ➢ News is excluded from AIO (for now) • AI offers alternative ways to search; ➢ Market shares are small… so far ➢ Not yet worth focusing on ➢ But, be ready to pivot ➢ It’s still SEO

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https://www.seoforgooglenews.com/

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Thank You [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/barryadams/ https://www.SEOforGoogleNews.com/