Google has published new documentation about its new AI summary search feature. This document provides answers to your search queries and links to web pages where you can find more information. New documentation provides important information about how new features work and what publishers and their SEOs should consider.
What triggers an AI overview?
An introduction to AI is when the user intends to quickly understand information, especially when that information need is associated with a task.
“AI Overview appears in Google search results when the system determines you want to quickly understand information from a variety of sources, including information on the web and Google's Knowledge Graph.”
Another part of the document ties triggers to task-based information needs.
“…and use the information you find to advance your tasks.” “
What types of sites does AI Overview link to?
An important fact to consider is that just because an AI overview is triggered by a user's need to understand something quickly, it doesn't mean that only queries with information needs will trigger new search capabilities. Google's documentation reveals that the types of websites that can benefit from AI Overview links include “creators” (meaning video creators), e-commerce stores, and other businesses. This means that much more than informational websites can benefit from an AI overview.
New documentation lists the types of sites that can receive links from AI Overview.
“This allows people to dig deeper, discover a diverse range of content from publishers, creators, retailers, businesses and more, and use the information they discover to advance their tasks.”
Where can I find an overview of AI?
The AI overview displays information and knowledge graphs from the web. Currently, when adding large amounts of new data, large language models must be completely retrained from scratch. This means that the websites shown in the overview feature are selected from Google's standard search index. This means Google may be using Search Enhancement Generation (RAG).
The RAG is a system that sits between the large language model and the information database external to the LLM. This external database can be of specific knowledge, such as including the entire contents of an organization's human resources policies in a search index. This is a supplementary source of information that you can use to double-check the information provided by the LLM or to indicate where you can read more about the questions being answered.
The section cited at the beginning of the article states that the AI overview cites sources from the web and the knowledge graph.
“AI Overview appears in Google search results when the system determines you want to quickly understand information from a variety of sources, including information on the web and Google's Knowledge Graph.”
What automatic inclusion means for SEO
Incorporation into AI Overview is automatic and requires no action from publishers or SEOs specific to AI Overview. Google's documentation states that all you need to do to rank in AI Overview is follow the guidelines for ranking in regular search. Google's “system” determines which sites are selected to display topics that surface in the AI Overview.
All statements seem to support that the new overview feature sources its data from the regular search index. It's possible that Google is filtering its search index specifically for his AI overview, but frankly I can't think of any reason why Google would do something like that.
Any mention of automatic inclusion indicates that Google may use the regular search index.
“Publishers don’t need to do anything to benefit from AI Overview.”
“The AI overview provides links to resources that support the information in the snapshot, allowing you to explore the topic further.”
“…diverse content from publishers, creators, retailers, businesses and more…”
“To rank with AI Overview, publishers simply need to follow the Google Search Essentials guide.
“Google's systems automatically determine which links appear. Other than following regular guidance for appearing in search, as explained in Google Search Basics, creators have no control over what links appear. There is nothing special to be considered.”
Think in terms of topics
Obviously, keywords and synonyms in queries and documents play an important role. But in my opinion, they play a huge role in SEO. There are many ways to annotate documents to help search engines match topics to his web pages, including what Googler Martin Splitt calls eyeball annotations. Featured annotations are used by Google to label web pages with information about what the web page is about.
Semantic annotation
This type of annotation links web page content to concepts and gives structure to unstructured documents. Every web page is unstructured data, so search engines need to understand it. Semantic annotation is one way to do that.
Google has been matching web pages and concepts since at least 2015. Google's webpage for cloud products describes how it has integrated neural matching into its search engine to annotate webpage content with topic-specific topics.
Here's what Google says about how it matches web pages and concepts:
“Google Search began incorporating semantic search in 2015, introducing notable AI search innovations such as the deep learning ranking system RankBrain. This innovation was soon followed by neural matching, which enabled document retrieval in Search. Improved accuracy. Neural matching allows search engines to learn the relationships between query intent and relevant documents, allowing searches to recognize the context of a query rather than simple similarity searches. .
Neural matching helps understand ambiguous representations of concepts in queries and pages and matches them against each other. You can look beyond just keywords to queries and entire pages to better understand the underlying concepts expressed there. ”
Google has been working on matching web pages to concepts for nearly a decade. Google's documentation on AI Overview also states that displaying links to web pages based on topic is part of determining which sites are ranked in AI Overview.
Google explains:
“The AI overview provides links to resources that support the information in the snapshot, allowing you to explore the topic further.
…AI Overview provides a preview of a topic or query based on a variety of sources, including web sources.
Google's focus on topics has been around for a long time, but topic targeting also presents an opportunity for SEO to loosen its grip on keyword targeting and strengthen its ability to show content in Google searches, including AI summaries. It started a long time ago.
Google states that the same optimizations described in the Search Essentials documentation for ranking in Google Search are the same optimizations applied to ranking in Google Overview.
This is exactly what the new documentation says.
“There is nothing special for creators to be considered other than following regular guidance for appearing in search, as explained in Google Search Essentials.”
Read Google's new SEO documentation on AI overview
AI overview and website
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