Google AI

A new study shows that Google‘s AI Overviews now appear in almost half of all search results, taking up a large part of both mobile and desktop screens.

The research, done by Botify and DemandSphere, looked at over 120,000 keywords from 22 websites between August and September. The findings reveal that these AI Overviews are changing how users interact with search results.

Here are the key points from the study:

AI Overviews in Search: Google’s AI Overviews appear in 47% of search results and can take up to 48% of mobile screen space. When combined with featured snippets, they can cover up to 76% of the mobile screen, pushing other search results further down.

Impact on Click-Through Rates: Traditional SEO metrics, like click-through rates (CTR), may no longer fully explain how well a site is doing. With AI Overviews appearing more often, many searches end without users clicking any links, a trend known as “zero-click searches.” Now, 60% of searches are answered without clicking on any link.

Ranking and Relevance: For AI Overviews to show up, the website must be highly ranked. About 75% of the websites mentioned in AI Overviews rank in the top 12 organic search results. Content that closely matches the meaning of the AI-generated summaries is more likely to be included.

Keyword Trends:

  • Websites with less popular keywords (fewer than 1,000 searches per month) triggered AI Overviews 55% of the time.
  • Long-tail keywords (with 5 or more words) triggered AI Overviews in 73.6% of cases.
  • Informational queries saw AI Overviews 58.7% of the time, while commercial queries saw them only 19.4% of the time.

Crawlability Issues: The study found that Google misses crawling about 50% of pages on large websites. This means that even if a page has great content, it might not be found by Google and therefore won’t show up in AI Overviews.

Content Quality: Pages that are closely related to the AI-generated summaries, in terms of content meaning, are more likely to be cited in AI Overviews. Higher quality and more relevant content help improve visibility in search results.

Implications for Businesses: The study recommends businesses focus on:

  • Tracking how visible their sites are in the search results, including AI Overviews.
  • Ensuring content is highly relevant and semantically aligned with what Google’s AI summarizes.
  • Maintaining strong SEO practices to stay in the top 12 rankings.
  • Expanding SEO strategies to account for AI-driven tools and platforms like Bing, ChatGPT Search, and Meta AI.

What to Focus On:

  • Measure the visual impact of search results by checking how much screen space your website occupies.
  • Focus on making your content semantically relevant to AI Overviews.
  • Keep working on SEO basics to maintain your organic ranking.