Ask a SEO: Glenn Gabe (part two!)
Glenn gives us his thoughts on AI Mode and what publishers should think about the future of search
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Hello, and welcome back. Jessie and Shelby here, back from a relaxing weekend to officially kick off spring. Jessie sewed three of these quilted book sleeves and crushed the competition at trivia. Shelby took inspiration from black bears and hibernated (aka slept) for more than 13 hours Saturday. A new woman? That’s me!
This week: The second instalment of our Ask a SEO interview with Glenn Gabe! In this edition, we talk in depth about AI Overviews, AI Mode and how publishers should think about the future of search. Check out part one all about Google updates.
Join our community of more than 2,100 news SEOs on Slack to chat any time.
THE INTERVIEW
WTF is SEO?: What do publishers need to know about Google's newly launched AI Mode?
Glenn Gabe: I got pretty early access, only about a day after it launched, and I've been using it heavily. I'll be honest, AI Mode has been pretty good in my opinion. Some people have said, "it's hallucinating" or "it's not great," but I've really been enjoying AI Mode. There's a ton of citations and links in there, and then I continue the conversation [with Google's AI by asking follow up questions], almost like when SGE [Search Generative Experience] first launched. Now that it's baked into AI Mode, I’m using it a lot. I'm actually clicking through more when I'm continuing the conversation than after the initial response.
But the reality for publishers is you're probably going to get less traffic overall with AI Mode, but as people continue the conversation and ask follow-up questions, they're probably going to link through a decent amount of time, depending on what they're searching for.
The beauty is that AI Mode taps into Google Search, so it could literally answer breaking news queries. That's big for news publishers. I do think it’s going to lead to a decent amount of traffic for sites, although definitely less.
Also, I could see AI Mode taking over and AI Overviews going away. That's my opinion. Right now, AI Mode is in its own separate tab, which is nice. Almost the way AIOs should have been, not forced on everybody.
WTF is SEO?: Are people going to think about AI Mode in the same way they do these other LLMs? What are the methods or the ways to get in front of people?
Glenn Gabe: The good news is that there's a ton of citations and links. I'm not a big fan of saying “do this for LLMs or AI chatbots” versus “do this in search” because I'm seeing a lot of overlap.
It's really making sure that you're doing everything that you would SEO-wise for it, including earning links and mentions from authoritative sites, writing great content, building your brand, being well known as a writer, etc.
What I would say for news publishers is to really start taking a look at those follow-up questions, because I think that's key to getting traffic in AI Mode. The initial question in AI Mode is providing a lot of great information. For a lot of people, that may be enough. But for the ones that are asking more, they might click through via those follow-up questions.
A recent DigiDay story talked about AI Overviews and how publishers don't know how it's impacting them because there's no tracking. But there was an interesting quote from a Google spokesperson that said people who click from search results pages with AI Overviews spend more time on those sites downstream.
In my opinion, that's probably through specific studies that they're running, but I found that interesting. I get it, because I'm asking those follow-up questions and I'm going to the site and then I am spending more time because I'm actually reading through that article.
Regarding tracking, I wrote a whole post recently about how tracking in Google Search Console could work for AI Mode. AIOs are tracked now in GSC, but they're mixed in with the blue links data. The only way I could track AIOs specifically is because I found a loophole where sites that had manual actions were still ranking in AIOs. While they had the manual action, I was able to see pure AIO GSC data, which was amazing.
For the number one position, which is anywhere in the AIO block, the click-through rates were only four to seven per cent, which is really low when technically you're number one.
With AI Mode, I think Google will track it like AI Overviews where all the links in the AI Mode will be position one, which is crazy.
And if you ask for a follow-up question, I believe that will be a fresh query to Google and then all links will also be a number one position. So all of that mixed in with the rest of the search data — unless Google provides a filter or a separate report for AI Mode — is going to be super confusing for site owners.
And I think that's probably what Google wants. I don't think they want anybody truly tracking what's going on there.
WTF is SEO?: With click-through rates being lower, is the motivation to not make the data available?
Glenn Gabe: I think so. [Google CEO Sundar] Pichai’s pitch at first was that there would be more clicks coming through AI Overviews. Then, they changed that to more diversity of clicks through AI Overviews. And I thought, wait a minute, that's not the same. We're hearing different things.
I don't think they want anyone to be able to say, “I used to have a featured snippet and I had a 70 per cent click-through rate, and now I have an AI Overview link and I have a six per cent click-through rate."
Some third-party tools are really good for tracking AI Overviews — it’s not giving you clicks and traffic, but at least to know you're ranking there. I'm a big fan of ziptie.dev; it’s really good. It provides historical information of when you were in the AI Overview, if you have a featured snippet and where you're ranking in the top ten. They just expanded tracking to more countries as well.
Other tools, like Semrush, Ahrefs or Sistrix have AI Overview data that enable you to see all AI Overviews your site is ranking for based on their own data.
Those tools are starting to tinker with trying to look at AI Mode, but we're not going to see any sort of third-party tracking on that until it rolls out to a lot more people.
WTF is SEO?: For sites that rely on Google traffic to stay in business, what should we be doing now?
Glenn Gabe: This [the acceleration of AI in search results] is going to upend the entire ecosystem because so many sites monetize through ads and eyeballs and that's probably going to decrease.
Publishers who were struggling a few years ago are now really struggling because there's less traffic and major updates are coming and they're dropping in rankings. If a site purely relies on advertising, that's going to be a really tough path. Diversifying how you monetize your site is something to work on right now, whether that's subscriptions or paywalls; tools and functionality; and building a strong relationship with your audience. That's definitely something that I would start to do soon (if you aren’t already doing it).
If AI Mode is a sign of what's coming, there will be less clicks, but you might have more valuable clicks overall. That’s due to people “continuing the conversation” via AI Mode, digging deeper, and then clicking through. It’s just not going to be the same traffic levels.
Also, featured snippets prevalence is dropping as AIOs are increasing. That could be a big reason why some sites are leaking traffic over the past year. Maybe you’re not getting hit by an algorithm update necessarily, but if you used to have many featured snippets and now the featured snippets are gone [your site could leak traffic].
Maybe AIOs are [surfacing] now and you're one one of 40 or more links — good luck trying to get the same amount of traffic (or even track what’s going on). That’s the reality of what’s happening now.
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RECOMMENDED READING
Google news and updates
🤖 Barry Schwartz: The company confirmed that the volatility experienced before the March Core Update was officially announced is unrelated to the release.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: Google is testing adding links to its own search results directly in search results.
🤖 Google: The company understands the the challenge of spam is “huge,” says a slide shared during a Google Search Central event.
🤖 Lily Ray: A slide this event indicates that half of all documents on the open web are spam.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: The API for Google Search Console will soon support a 24-hour hourly view for data.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: Pages without engagement by users in search results may be de-indexed, Google’s Martin Splitt said in a YouTube video.
🤖 Barry Schwartz: Takeaways from Google’s Search Central event in New York.
Even more recommended reading:
📅 Steve Paine: Results from Google’s March core update so far.
🏃 Wired: Google should have been first to the chatbot revolution — but it wasn’t. An inside look at the company’s two year frenzy to catch up with Open AI.
👎 Barry Adams: “Google's AI Overviews are terrible at quoting the right sources.”
🔍 Gianluca Fiorelli: Here’s how to be visible both in Google search arch and large language models.
📉 Goog Enough: “Any sites getting traffic from the People Also Ask module can say goodbye to it” as Google shows more AI-written answers in the SERP feature.
📸 Aisha Malik: Meta is spotted testing AI-generated comments on Instagram.
🗾 Local Falcon: A beginner's guide to getting found in local search results.
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Have something you’d like us to discuss? Send us a note on Twitter (Jessie or Shelby) or to our email: seoforjournalism@gmail.com.
Written by Jessie Willms and Shelby Blackley
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