What does Google’s new AI integration mean for SEO?

seo near milton keynes

A few days ago, I’d noticed my dog Cilka observing herself curiously in the mirror. I wondered to myself, “Do dogs have a sense of self?” And as I so often do, I typed the answer into Google to see what I could uncover. 

Expecting to find a blog article about the subject, I was surprised to see that rather than showing me relevant results, Google instead used AI to quickly generate an answer. It appears their Gemini AI platform has now been baked right into the top of search results

It was only a matter of time before they did this of course. I imagine they’d been losing market share to ChatGPT, and the search community have talked about Google becoming more of an answer engine than a search engine. But still, Google hasn’t really introduced a major change to it’s search platform for decades, so it was definitely a big deal to see! 

Interestingly, it’s not just answers Google gives you – it will recommend products based on your question as well, as I discovered when looking for some new mountain boots. 

So, with Google showing you the answers directly rather than displaying relevant results, business owners will undoubtedly be wondering: what does this mean for search engine optimisation (SEO)?

I’ll be honest, it’s hardly surprising that a few people I know in the SEO industry are concerned by this. Afterall, if Google is showing answers directly, that’s surely going to eat into website traffic, right? 

Whilst none of us can know for sure, my belief is that in short, yes – it is likely websites will lose some traffic as a result of this. However, that will probably be counteracted by Google seeing an overall increase in usage and traffic due to improved user experience. 

For years Google have been implementing features that improve UX for years, whether that’s handling currency conversions, translating text, showing the weather, or giving short answers – all within the main body of Google.

Google’s main goal is, and always has been, to be the world’s no.1 search engine. I remember when they brought out snippets and people said SEO was dead, yet SEO is now more relevant than ever – we get dozens of leads a week through organic search!

But underlying my theory is this one core principle: Google makes billions of dollars a year from paid ads, a large proportion of which comes from its display network. $32.78 billion to be precise. Now what do you imagine would happen if this display network collapsed because nobody visited websites anymore? They would lose an absolutely massive amount of revenue! I don’t imagine their shareholders would be too happy either. Killing off organic traffic to these sites would cost Google an absolute fortune. And believe me, they are not that dumb! 

Now in all honesty, some websites will be hurt by this update. Flight comparison sites for example might well lost a lot of organic traffic. Why waste time going to Kayak or Skyscanner when you can compare flights without even leaving the home page of Google? Google would rather give you the answer straight away with AI and provide a better UX than lose the odd publisher here and there. And the greater the UX, the more popular Google becomes, and the more organic traffic you’ll get. 

Conclusion

Google’s new AI integration is likely to impact sites with articles ranking for long-tail keyword searches, which accordinging to data, makes up for about 12% of all searches. And of those searches, 72% were not transactional. I.E. they were people curious about their dogs’ behaviour, not people looking for a web design company in Milton Keynes

Overall I think this change is a good thing. They are better for users, meaning they are better for marketers. We always have to adapt to Google’s changes now as we always have – that is the nature of digital marketing. 

I have always encouraged our clients to take an omni-channel approach to marketing, looking at organic, paid, and social, in order to leverage all avenues for lead generation.