ChatGPT has taken the world by storm and the reason is simple. It gives you all the world’s information without you needing to click separate blue links. Google is trying to replicate that success with its AI Overview (AIO) feature.

But how does this impact your business? Suppose your target audience who lives in Dubai searches for something related to the products or services that you offer. Now instead of showing your landing page or blog, Google summarizes all content related to the user’s query and provides it in search.

Naturally, you may lose traffic. So, what can you do to get visitors back to your site when the user sees only the AI Overview?

As Dubai’s top web design and digital marketing agency, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about Google’s AI Overview, how it impacts your business, and what you can do about it. 

What is Google’s AI Overview?

AI Overview is Google’s way of introducing Generative AI into the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). 

The feature is powered by a process called Retrieval Augmentation Generation. It uses a retrieval model to find relevant information from blogs, social media, articles, etc. based on a query and then a generative model creates a response using the retrieved information.

AI Overview uses Google’s powerful Large Language Models, including a version of Gemini customized for Search. 

When a user performs a Search, Google looks inside its index, finds the most relevant fragments of information related to your search, understands the information, and generates entirely new content that is well formatted and easily digestible for the user.

Role of AI in Google Search

To be fair, Google has been using AI in Search for many years now. It helped Google understand the search intent of the user, find and rank high-quality content, filter out spam, and provide personalized search experiences. 

With AI Overview, however, even though the term has “AI” in it, this is a completely different product altogether as it is creating new content based on existing content. This is what Generative AI brings to the table. 

So if Google is now generating content, what does it mean for Search?

Impact of Google AI Overview on Search

Back in 2014, Google introduced Featured Snippets, which also showed a brief summary above the organic listings. The similarity to AI Overview is uncanny, and they both show up in the same place. 

Google says that there is nothing special that businesses need to do in order to get their blogs to be considered for being summarized in the AIO. You just need to follow the Google Search Essential guide. But we all know it’s easier said than done, which is why even if you’re a small business owner in Dubai, you need a digital marketing and SEO agency to get your site ranked in Google.

Arguably, AI Overviews are more detailed as they take information from multiple sources, albeit being a bit slower than featured snippets. Either way, the chances of a user clicking an organic link become considerably lower in both cases.

As people get more accustomed to AI Overviews, they’ll rely more on the summaries rather than taking their time to click on an organic link and read through a blog. 

That being said, Google does need to make money from AI Overviews as these take up a lot of resources.

How will AI Overview show sponsored content?

If you’re already promoting your business in Google Ads, they will automatically qualify to be in AI overviews. You don’t have to do anything extra as the ad copy and campaign setting from all your existing ads will carry over. 

However, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is changing rapidly, so make sure you have a digital marketing team who are well-versed with the latest SEO updates from Google.

How Google’s AI Overview impact your business?

A recent study by Terakeet, a company that does brand management for global brands, found that websites that are excluded from AI Overviews get critically lower rankings. 

However, websites that do get included in AI Overviews get much higher rankings regardless of their original ranking. 

In our research, we found that Google’s AI Overview prefers authoritative sites, especially in the healthcare and B2B technology sectors. The travel, restaurant and insurance sectors now show a higher presence in AIO search results.

But the e-commerce sector shows a slight drop in AIO, meaning Google’s product grids may be a better option. 

Either way, it is now clear that Google AIO prefers authoritative sites more and no matter what industry your business operates, you’ll need to be authoritative.

Should you continue writing blogs on your business website?

The best way to position your business as authoritative is to showcase your expertise and credibility in your industry. And to do that, you’ll need to create original, valuable, unique, and relevant content.

Because no matter how advanced AIO becomes, it still needs to take information from some content. Even now, and for many more years to come, blogs will be the primary source of information for AI Overview.

So we recommend that you double down on writing blogs on your business website. But with your competitors churning out irrelevant content from ChatGPT and the like, this is your opportunity to create human-written high-quality content. 

Of course, writing at least 2 blogs every week is not easy for small and medium-sized businesses, which is why you should consider hiring best content writing services in Dubai.

How PixaBell help increase your business visibility?

The truth is that AI Overview is here to stay, so if your website and content are not aligned with what your target audience expects, then chances are that your visibility and rankings may go down.As experts in web design and digital marketing, PixaBell has first-hand experience with these changes and knows exactly how to position your business as credible and authoritative. Contact us today.