Google rolls out AI-organised search results

Rory Hope -

The latest AI update from Google sees the company roll out AI-organised search results in the US for search queries that "may be open-ended or have no single right answer – like if you’re searching for a vegetarian appetizer to make for a dinner party."

Key takeaways:

  • Users will see a full-page experience with relevant AI-organised results for their query that includes a greater diversity of search features and media formats – including articles, videos, forums and more
  • This will offer more discoverability for your video content (e.g. YouTube Shorts) to be served in the main search results pages for relevant queries and topics
  • Google has stated they will not be adding monitoring functionality to Google Search Console for AI-organised results – they will show up as regular Organic rankings, impressions and clicks
  • It's unclear how this will impact third-party ranking tracking software. Reach out to your rep to get their perspective on how to track performance with an increasing amount of search experiences delivered in this way.

Strategies and tactics

Internal linking remains a vastly powerful, often underutilised tactic. Check out this helpful article by Mangools on how internal link building can be an effective way to improve rankings and traffic.

Key takeaways:

  • Internal links are important for improving site structure, crawling, indexing, passing page authority, and providing a better user experience
  • Your internal linking strategy should support your main pages (like the homepage, product pages and pricing page), as well as establish topic clusters and taxonomies within navigational and contextual links across your site
  • You can improve internal linking by fixing broken links, avoiding orphan pages, fixing internal redirect chains, and optimising for the 3-click rule (from the homepage).

The article contains an overview of a couple of useful methodologies with Mangools, Google Search Console and ScreamingFrog.

Channel updates

YouTube Shorts are becoming YouTube Longs. That’s correct — like TikTok and other social platforms. YouTube is extending its ‘Shorts’ feature up to three minutes long.

It’ll give marketers new opportunities to create medium-length video content that has high discoverability on the YouTube Shorts interface.

With Google rolling out AI-organised search results, there's also greater opportunities for YouTube Shorts to be served in those more diverse search results.

MarTech news

Ads have arrived in Google's AI Overviews. As expected, Google has started to rollout ad experiences within their AIOs on mobile for users in the US.

Google claims that "people are finding ads directly within AI Overviews helpful because they can quickly connect with relevant businesses, products and services to take the next step."

Search and Shopping ads will appear directly within AI Overviews, with "Sponsored" labels.

TechCrunch reports that AI Overviews have led to an increase in Google Search engagement, particularly for the demographic of young people aged 18 to 24. This indicates there is an opportunity to reach and engage that demographic through this new ad experience.

Takeaways:

  • I'll be keeping a close eye on the search queries that are most valuable to my marketing campaigns, doing spot checks to see where AIO ads are appearing
  • Work with your paid marketers to try to get insights on how these campaigns are performing, and where the opportunities are
  • Monitor your overall Organic performance in Google Search Console, as the rollout of AIO ads may start to cannibalise any Organic impressions and clicks you were getting before from AIOs.

Thank you for reading. If you found my roundup helpful, please do share this on to a friend or colleague!