Over the last few years, there have been many updates in the Google algorithm that have changed the way we think about SEO. These have nearly always been manageable. While the algorithm determining what websites rank the highest can change, so too can the tactics taken to optimise sites and make them more visible.
One of the more recent updates, however, is a little more tricky to navigate. Earlier in 2024, Google SEO, Sundar Pichai, stood up during the company’s annual developer conference and announced one of the most significant changes in SEO history. You might have already noticed it. As of this year, Google Search has been providing its own AI-generated answers to questions, involving a feature called ‘AI Overviews’ which is designed to give users quick, direct answers to their queries without so much as having to click on an individual website.
Offering web design services in Oxfordshire, we’ve had a lot of local companies come to us asking for guidance, but the situation is complex. In order to navigate this latest change, it’s important to not only understand how your website can compete globally but at a local level. This begins with understanding how AI Overviews affect visibility and traffic.
AI Overviews: Explained
As mentioned previously, AI Overviews is a recent feature introduced by Google at their latest developer conference. It works by using NLP – interpreting nuances in user intent – and ML models like BERT – understanding relationships between different concepts, contexts, and languages – to offer summaries that are perfectly accurate and contextual. The overall goal here is to enhance the user experience and make sure they get reliable, definitive answers faster than ever.
The Problem for Website Traffic
The problem for you is that many users will no longer need to click on your website to answer their queries. With Google now answering questions directly, websites in Oxford and beyond will no longer be able to rely on SEO to attract users and build brand visibility – or at least, they will no longer be able to rely on their usual tactics for SEO.
Boosting Your Website With AI
While the outlook might initially look pretty bleak – recent data showed that top websites like New York Magazine and GQ.com lost 32% and 26% in the last six months, respectively – there are still ways to put your website in a good position to succeed.
As we mentioned before, AI Overviews scours the internet for the most credible sources, and if your site is picked, Google may still display you as an original source beneath the overview in the search results. In this way, it’s a good idea to treat AI as ‘just another user’.
What it’s looking for is genuine, engaging, and educational content that sets it apart from the typical ‘SEO-oriented’ articles – and if it likes what it sees, it will present that information to a vast number of other users. It’s also worth noting that the overview is typically one to three sentences long. While this might reduce click-through rates from people looking for direct answers, it can still lead to increased traffic if users see your website referenced and decide to visit it for more information.
Solving the AI Overviews Problem
In a way, AI Overviews have simply made it even more necessary to focus on producing high-quality content, which is something we’ve already talked about in previous blogs.
Companies who do this could still get rewarded by having their site referenced – thus boosting their authority and credibility in the eyes of both Google and users – and will still be visited by users who are seeking out more in-depth, entertaining information, irrespective of AI-generated summaries.
For businesses in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, specifically, it has also become even more important to ground the content that you make. If users are searching for answers with a local context, your website has more chance of being referenced by AI Overviews if you’re explicitly talking to a select group of local people, rather than casting your net too wide.
Conclusion
Is the latest Google SEO update good for businesses? In our opinion, probably not. Having AI generate answers without always giving direct citations to the sources it has used is not helpful, and its negative impact is clearly demonstrated by the decrease in traffic for high-profile authoritative websites. But it’s not the end of the road. To compete in 2024, 2025 and beyond, it’s more important than ever to ground your website and make sure all of your content is as high-quality as possible.
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