Are Google’s AI-generated summaries in its Generative Search Experience (SGE) interface unfairly stealing clicks from the online page editors who created the answers of some?
This is the query that everyone in search engine optimization and virtual marketing has been doing for a few months now.
With Google’s most recent update showing more prominent links to SGE sources, now is the time to review this issue.
But before you start, do me a favor. For the next two sections, let’s leave how code snippets are generated in SGE.
For what? Because I’ve noticed that too much discussion about SGE turns into arguments about generative AI and big-language models.
It’s an engaging discussion to have, and we communicate about it. But we miss the point by reducing our thinking about SGE to the specific set of rules that ultimately fuel it.
Looking at this specific iteration of a set of rules that Google uses to generate previews of search effects prevents us from asking much more engaging questions.
As SEOs, we think of features in terms of the search itself and ask ourselves:
We can’t ask any of those questions when we’re caught up in the complexity of how Google’s generative AI style works.
So, for a few minutes, let’s believe that it doesn’t matter how Google generates the answers shown in SGE.
Our discussion won’t count whether those answers are crafted through generative AI, another algorithm, sent through owners, handwritten through a Googler trapped in a basement office, or magically created through a team of little green fairies.
Can you do that for me? Super!
Now let’s talk about EMS.
On Tuesday, Google submitted a new design to SGE that made links more visible.
Previously, the default SGE interface displayed resources prominently. Instead, users had to click a button to see the links explicitly in the text of this snippet:
Since August 1, there is only one mode, which shows a clickable chevron at the end of the paragraph:
When you click on this chevron, you will see a drop-down list with clickable links to the Internet pages where SGE extracted its summary:
As you can see, this new user interface is very similar to the long mode of the old SGE interface.
However, I suspect it will be a major improvement for maximum users. I’m probably in the minority for having clicked this little extension button.
Even small design tweaks to the attribution of Google presentations are vital to who creates and publishes content on the web.
After all, Google’s previous edition of SGE won a lot of complaints from the public. In particular, Avram Piltch of Tom’s Hardware wrote in early June:
Many have already hailed Google’s new user interface as an improvement.
I even heard smart things from one of the most vocal critics of SGE’s initial lack of assignment, Lily Ray. Ray, senior director of search engine optimization and director of organic search at Amsive Digital, told me:
What did Tom’s Hardware mean by “plagiarism” in the quote above?
The description of Piltch is, in fact, fascinating.
Read this again, but apply each to Google’s pre-existing code snippets:
The real difference between SGE summaries and featured excerpts is the number of links they come with (and the lack of light colors):
You can simply say that the example above, such as SGE, also “captures facts and text fragments only” explicitly “word for word” from the Untold Italy website.
So why is one interface treated as a search while the other as a theft?
I believe SGE includes quotes from online pages functionally equal to the text displayed in featured snippets or in the peak of Google’s SERP results.
Danielle Stout Rohe, senior manager of the search engine, content and data optimization program at Cox Automotive Inc. , agrees. As he told me:
SGE seems like an herb from the previous functions of SERP.
“We demonstrate featured snippets in search when we think this format will make it less difficult for other people to realize what they’re looking for, either from the description or when they click on the link to read the page. This is especially useful for those who use mobile or perform voice search. “
Most of this language follows all those advances directly, from 2007 to 2023, check with SGE.
But I wasn’t there in the early days of SEO. Fortunately, I know who was.
So I asked the marketer and my informal collaborator Rand Fishkin (CEO of SparkToro; formerly Moz), who told me:
We can speculate how much SGE has been influenced through the recent popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But I don’t think those features are just an attempt by Google to grab the industry’s attention.
SGE summaries are the latest form of “instant responses” in a long list of past iterations.
Treatment. . . Please wait.
What are we afraid of when we accuse a search engine like Google of “stealing”?
One of the techniques of this challenge is to look back. How did we feel when the code snippets and their long quotation marks were first published?
The clips presented also caused a healthy dose of anxiety. As Paul Shapiro, technical director of search engine optimization at Shopify, explained to me:
Shapiro’s concern makes perfect sense. When we publish content online, we expect users to find it. The principle of search engine optimization is to help websites be found for the corresponding queries.
A top rating in the SERP is just one way to increase a site’s exposure to more users, hoping they’ll click.
Even Google itself agrees. Describing the new UI in an August 2 update, they wrote:
“SGE is designed to be a starting point for exploring useful data on the web, with links to search for effects included in the AI preview. “
It’s totally fair to ask if we need a search engine to “steal” our clicks or decrease our CTRs. But this factor is not unique to SGE. Our fear of wasting clicks on SERP previews also applies to other content previews that have been presented in the past.
When Google first announced snippets in a blog post in 2009, it described the feature as a way to increase the number of clicks Internet sites would receive:
“It’s an undeniable improvement in the way search effects are displayed, but our reports have shown that users find new information valuable: if they see useful and actionable information on the page, they’re more likely to click on it. “
Worried about wasting clicks on SGE summaries?We also want to know how those considerations support the long history of search engines providing pattern online page content in other forms.
We can simply argue that a search engine attracts readers by presenting code snippets, maps, meta descriptions, rating algorithms, or the SERP design itself.
After all, the Internet pages that rank high in search effects get more clicks than those below.
Why don’t we ask ourselves how “fair” it is for a search engine which sites are the most worthy of being featured?
It’s easy to glance at a search snippet and think that users might not possibly click through to your site when they can only get their answers in the SERP itself.
But the user habit is much more confusing than that, and some users will still look at the same old “blue links” even with SGE.
For example, Rohe noted:
And in the years noted other iterations of Google integrate content directly into the SERP, our websites haven’t exactly collapsed. As Shapiro observed:
Yes, Google as a company has reason to keep users on their own search effects page.
However, if all users abandoned its search engine because it does not locate applicable websites, Google’s profits would suffer.
Ultimately, they want to continue to provide a decent enough user experience and provide publishers with enough visitors for Google to value the indexing of their sites.
And, as far as I know, the maximum piece of visually distinct code tends to accumulate CTR.
According to Backlinko, first-place classifieds get 74. 5% more clicks than second-place classifieds.
In this case, presenting even more at this coveted “zero point”, as SGE does, would not be even greater to attract visitors to the ?
At the heart of our discomfort with significant changes to the SERP is a much more important question than its impact on CTR: what makes a search engine like Google “good”?
We may not know, but we all make certain assumptions about research.
Whenever we talk about SERP feature updates, we struggle with our “natural” user experience when searching the web.
The main challenge Google solves is “how to track borrowed online page traffic. “
It’s easy to hate a great company, but for those who work in Google search, the main question is, “How can we help users if certain effects fit what they’re looking for?”
From this point of view, contextual healing is incredibly useful. SGE resembles the features of some educational databases, such as EBSCOhost or Westlaw.
Especially when meta descriptions and site titles may seem similar, getting a more detailed look at the content can be incredibly helpful in determining what content to click on.
However, in its current form, SGE adds to most of the other rich features of SERP:
Ray detected the same fear in his experience:
I think comparing the quality of effects between SERP features is precisely the kind of discussion we have.
Many SEOs never make it because we get stuck in a vision of an AI that ruins everyone’s search experience.
But was it like this before?
I’ll be fair: I’m excited about SGE because I think it can disappoint SEO. And we want it. We want more variety and possibilities in our industry.
Maybe we want the search engine optimization box to fundamentally replace. Because as it stands, many search effects are unusable to the average web user.
The Washington Post recently argued that Google was wasting its relevance as a leading search engine on the web, in part because some online page owners had manipulated their ratings too much.
And even from our perspective, many marketers precisely get excited about generating search engine optimization content.
I’ve heard marketers say they look for content as an obstacle, an obligation, a task.
And others have speculated that some SEOs are ashamed of their own work.
We live with a dark legacy of SEO, having as a box a pretty bad reputation. As Fishkin reminded me:
It is difficult to feel that our paintings are valued through the search engine that we have made one of our main marketing channels.
So when Google makes disruptive adjustments to the SERP, we feel uncomfortable.
We don’t need the grass underneath us or our customers, as all hard-earned traffic is eliminated overnight.
But my for you is: what is the validity of SGE, in particular, as an object of this fear?
Yes, there are many reasons to be dissatisfied with Google as a business or with its specific product decisions related to search. And I’m not going to protect the lifestyle of the big tech monopolies.
But I also know that, whether we discuss SGE or not, Google probably wouldn’t avoid being a giant company. These kinds of adjustments are the duty of lawyers and regulators, not SEOs.
We are marketers who live in a world where Google is the number one search engine, a world where most people still use Google to browse the web.
We can foam at the mouth, arguing that Google can borrow our traffic with a more imaginative snippet, or we can ask more engaging questions.
And some of those questions may even shape the internet in the direction we’d like, whether Google launches those features or not.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest and not necessarily those of Search Engine Land. Staff emails are indexed here.
About the Author
Related topics
Topics
Our Events
By the way
Follow