Google Shares 8 Ways To Be Successful With Ai Search Experiences

Google today published new guidance on how to “succeed” in its evolving AI-powered search experiences.

What’s new. The only real (sort of) news here is that Google has put into writing what Google’s Elizabeth Reid and others have said in recent months – that AI-driven searches are increasing engagement and creating higher-quality clicks. Also:

• Google said tools like nosnippet and max-snippet apply to AI content as well. This is more of a reminder that you can limit how your website appears – or doesn’t – in AI Overviews.
• Google suggested going beyond text and thinking multimodal. In other words, use high-quality images and videos, plus make sure your Merchant Center and Google Business Profile listings are updated.

Why we care. Google’s AI Overviews have reduced traffic to websites – and AI Mode (now available in the U.S. as of yesterday) is expected to make things even worse for organic traffic. We’re all being forced to try to adapt to these rapid changes in real time. Rather than delivering clear, new tips or advice about these huge changes, Google is basically telling us to sing the same old song and dance, when clearly the song hasn’t remained the same.

The eight things. They are:

• Focus on unique, valuable content for people
• Provide a great page experience
• Ensure we can access your content
• Manage visibility with preview controls
• Make sure structured data matches the visible content
• Go beyond text for multimodal success
• Understand the full value of your visits
• Evolve with your users

Let’s dig a bit deeper.

Higher-quality clicks. In the “Understand the full value of your visits” section of the Google Search Central blog post, John Mueller wrote:

“We’ve seen that when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality, where users are more likely to spend more time on the site. Why is this? Our AI results may give people more context about a topic overall, and display more relevant supporting links, than with classic Search. This may provide a more engaged audience and new opportunities with visitors, but you might not optimize for these if you focus too much on clicks instead of the overall value of your visits from Search. Consider looking at various indicators of conversion on your site, be it sales, signups, a more engaged audience, or information lookups about your business.”

Yes, but. Engagement is falling, according to AI Overviews research from Kevin Indig and SimilarWeb. And LLM traffic is not as engaged as classic organic search traffic, according to a study by SALT.agency. Meanwhile, Google dodges any CTR questions.

Evolution of Search. In the “evolve with your users” section (even though, really, Google is forcing AI upon us at an alarmingly fast rate and forcing us to evolve with them) Mueller wrote:

“The only thing predictable in Search is that it always evolves because people’s needs are always evolving. The classic ‘ten blue links’ format changed to handle the needs of those seeking visual, video, news, and other types of content. Desktop displays evolved to mobile-friendly ones. Search evolved to handle voice queries, or ‘multimodal’ queries, such as taking a picture of a flower and having Search identify it from the photos.

Our AI experiences represent yet another evolution with Search, so that we continue to best meet shifting user needs. This evolution also means new opportunities for site owners. With AI Overviews and AI Mode, people are using Search more often, asking new and more complex questions, and are more satisfied with their results. AI Overviews display links in a range of ways, and show a wider range of sources on the results page so it’s easy for people to click out and explore content on the web.”

Bottom line. Sure, Google’s AI Overviews show a wide range of sources, but studies show that impressions are up but clicks are down, AI Overviews are hurting CTRs, and CTRs are hitting new lows. So people clearly don’t seem to be clicking out as much as they did a year ago to explore all that great content on the web. Rather, they’ve become increasingly trapped in Google’s ecosystem, which Cloudflare’s CEO said is killing the web’s business model.

What isn’t new. Most of Google’s blog post rehashes what we’ve all heard for years. You know, create valuable content and page experiences.

The article. Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google’s AI experiences on Search