You have probably seen several AI Overviews if you use Google at all. These AI-generated answers usually come up first in search results, so they may answer questions before people even look at the list of website pages. They may also be bad for companies like yours since they tend to take traffic away from websites.
Fortunately, there are still methods to keep your search presence, both the old-fashioned way and with AI citations. But you need to be able to plan ahead if you want to keep up with changes in the search market. That implies you need to think about the future of AI and SEO and how both will evolve together.
This is what we’ll talk about on this page. We’ll talk about the following things:
AI Overviews: What They Are Right Now
- Trends that will shape the future of AI Overviews
- How AI Overviews will affect search visibility in the future
- Getting your SEO plan ready for the AI Overview age
The status of AI Overviews right now
AI Overviews show up in 25.8% of all U.S. Google searches right now, but that number rises to 39% for long-tail, informative inquiries. That shows how often Google AI Overviews are in search results.
This is important since AI Overviews may make it tougher to get organic traffic from Google. They affect a lot of various search metrics, such as how visible your site is, how many people click on it, and how well it competes with other sites. When these numbers are wrong, it might change the flow of your leads and the visibility of your pipeline, which makes it more expensive to get new customers.
The good news is that AI Overviews are not everywhere yet. The precise chance of an AI Overview showing up in a search depends on the length, nature, and industry of the inquiry. To decrease your odds of competing with AI in search results, you might focus on searches where AI Overviews are less likely to show up, such as local and transactional inquiries.
Trends that will affect the future of AI Overviews
Today we know what Google AI Overviews look like, let’s talk about where they’re going. We can’t predict the future, thus we can’t be sure what will happen. We may still guess what the next several years will be like by looking at some present and future trends relating to AI Overviews.
Here are some of the most important trends that might help us guess what will happen with AI Overviews in the future:
More sorts of queries: AI Overviews have been showing up in more and more searches over time. They don’t come up as frequently in shorter or commercial searches right now, but that might alter in the next several years.
Paid ad integration: AI Overviews have already begun to show paid adverts. We should probably expect to see more and more adverts show up in AI Overviews throughout the years, much as in Google’s regular search results.
More personalized: The launching of Gemini 2.0 made it more personalized than the first model. Future versions will probably make AI Overviews even more personalized and may perhaps include some multimodal features.
More common in high-value industries: AI Overviews will likely keep showing up more often in high-value queries that need a lot of knowledge and complicated information. Healthcare, law, finance, and other fields will be affected.
More attention on AI Mode: AI Overviews were the first step in Google’s move to AI, but AI Mode is a newer feature that only shows AI replies and not standard search results. AI Mode may get greater attention as Google puts more and more emphasis on AI.
In the next one to two years, you should start to see these trends go forward. There will be more ads and more sectors affected. AI Overviews will probably become the default for most information searches during the next three to five years.
How AI Overviews will affect search visibility in the future?
Many companies have already seen a change in how visible their searches are because of Google AI Overviews, and that change will only become bigger in the future.
AI Overviews will take up the title of “position zero,” which used to be held by highlighted snippets. You won’t really appear at the top of the search results if your material isn’t mentioned in the Overview. Companies that are included will get a lot more brand authority and traffic; therefore, AI Overviews will be a very popular place.
AI Overviews might potentially bring in a lot more traffic than regular search results. The statistics backs this up: AI Overviews haven’t yet exceeded conventional rankings, but generative AI traffic has increased 165 times faster than organic traffic. That’s a crazy statistic that illustrates how rapidly AI is taking over traffic creation. It also provides us with an idea of what to anticipate in the next several years.
Getting your SEO plan ready for the AI Overview age
Based on what we’ve talked about, it’s quite apparent what firms should do: they should make their sites better for AI Overviews. What does it really look like, though? How can companies use AI Overview optimization on their websites?
In the near future, here are some of the best ways your business can be ready for AI Overviews:
Stay useful and on topic: just using the proper keywords isn’t enough. Your material should be useful to people and related to the searches it is trying to get. That makes it more likely that you will show up in AI Overviews.
Be really specific: If your material is too generic, it will blend in with other sites and not be quoted as often. But if you write on really particular themes, you will stand out and get more AI citations.
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trust.
To improve your E-E-A-T, do the following: It’s crucial for both classic SEO and AI overview optimization to show all of those aspects in your content. Make sure to promote your unique perspective as an industry expert in your content.
Get backlinks and mentions: Getting backlinks from other websites and mentions on social media is an excellent method to show Google that your material is reliable and trustworthy. This will make it more likely that it will be acknowledged in AI Overviews.
Focus on local and transactional searches: As was said before, AI Overviews don’t show up as often in local and transactional searches. That means such queries are the best ones to go after to stay out of the way of AI Overviews—especially for businesses targeting specific areas like local SEO Portsmouth, where intent is often commercial and immediate.
Keep up with conventional on-page SEO: More than half of all AI Overview citations originate from sites that are already in the top 10 on Google. That implies that old-school SEO techniques like making pages load faster and making them work well on mobile devices are still useful for getting AI citations.
Check your AI visibility: Keep an eye on how visible your material is in AI Overviews so you can make changes as required. Our AI Overview checker will let you know how visible your AI is.
Keep in mind that the best strategy to optimize for AI Overviews may vary as they continue to evolve. That means you should pay attention to the latest AI and marketing developments, especially when it comes to things like OmniSEO™.
Use SEO.com to get your material suitable for the AI Overview.
There is a lot of change happening now and will happen in the future with AI Overviews. You should anticipate AI search to keep changing, from adding ads to the sector, continuing to grow. Your marketing has to keep changing as well.
SEO.com is the best place to go for assistance with your AI Overview optimization or your OmniSEO strategy in general. With our OmniSEO™ services, you can make sure that your website content is ready for the future and that your traffic and rankings stay high.