AI Overviews & How Digital Marketers Can Use AIO
In 2024, Google launched AI overviews for a lot of search queries. Since then, these AI overviews have expanded to make searching more convenient for users. They bring radical changes to the SEO landscape, but also new opportunities for digital marketers willing to learn AI optimization.
How AI Overviews Work
AI overviews scrape the most popular and relevant results pages, gathering quick and easy answers for the user. They also provide links to the sources of each statement in the overview, for further reading. To that end, AI overviews accompany most informational searches.
They don’t cover other search intents, however. If a search is navigational, Google’s own maps snippet shows up instead. If a search is transactional, relating to a product or service, newer AI widgets won’t normally get involved. For example, consider an industry native to the online space, like iGaming. It's full of sites that each offer a selection of games, and they rely on internet traffic through organic search. Typically, the user would search for an online casino and get a page of the most relevant, trustworthy casinos allowed to operate in the user’s area. The user can then pick the one that matches their interests or offers the best welcome bonus.
This buying process is the goal of most online sales funnels, and why SEO experts work so hard to get their sites close to the top of a results page. Google has realized that putting an AI-powered snippet at position zero, for a transactional search, could unfairly advantage some services over others. Transactional searches are therefore fair game right now.
AI Overviews Provide an SEO Opportunity
So, you can’t use AI overviews to market a product or service, but you can capitalize on their informational value. Many sites out there don’t just sell things or rake in affiliate income, they also run blogs, make social media content, and otherwise take steps to become an authority in their industry. This is a great way to build a supportive community for your small business.
To become an informational resource, it’s a good idea to publish pages that explain industry terms and other things people may want to know about your business. If you do this effectively, you could find one of your pages cited as a reputable source for an AI overview. That gives you a link to your site at what is essentially position zero, so you should see a traffic boost and a more authoritative online presence as a result. This is how AI overviews, as they exist today, provide a new way to top a search results page.
How to Achieve AI Optimization
To achieve AI optimization (AIO) – which is being hailed as a new subtype of SEO – you should invest in informational resources. Make a lot of pages covering as many specific, AI-friendly search queries as possible.
Yet the old rules still apply, they should make sense for your site, and you shouldn’t cannibalize your own content by mixing keywords. It’s a number’s game, so the more accurate, relevant informational pages you have, the merrier. Then there’s more chance that the AI will use your page as a source.
Some have predicted that AIO, through AI-powered assistants, could outpace and overtake traditional browsing services. That hasn’t happened yet, however, and savvy marketers will always have a means to get their products in front of people’s eyes online. For now, this AI feature could help fast-track you to the top of informational searches.
