The webinar, hosted by George Nguyen (Director of SEO Editorial at Wix) and featuring SEO experts Ann Smarty and Eli Schwartz, introduces attendees to Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and its impact on branded search. After housekeeping details from Crystal Carter, Ann Smarty presents a deep dive into branded search—defining it, explaining its high‑intent nature, and highlighting why brands must monitor and influence these queries. She discusses how AI‑generated overviews (the SGE “AI summary” feature) can surface brand‑related information, often beyond the brand’s direct control, using examples such as negative review snippets for Mailchimp. The session emphasizes the volatility of AI overviews, the need for proactive SEO strategies, and the importance of staying updated as Google refines the feature. The webinar is recorded for later viewing, with a Q&A to follow.
Chapters
Welcome, everyone, to what ranks in Google sge. My name is George Nguyen. I am the director of SEO editorial here at wix, which means I edit the articles that you see on the SEO Learning Hub, where you probably registered for this webinar. I'm going to talk to you. I'm going to be running the Q A and just helping smooth things along. But our experts here are who I want to spotlight first and foremost. Actually, not foremost. Right. Because we're all equal here. So I'm gonna scratch that and strike that one first and equally, Ann Smarty. She's an SEO analyst, founder of Viral Content B. I remember meeting her initially and one of the biggest lines that jumped out was she was former editor in chief of Search Engine Journal. So she's gonna be lending us her expertise. Say hello, Ann.
Hi there. Thank you for having me.
And after Ann speaks, we're gonna hear from Eli Schwartz. He is a hub author as well as Anna. Actually he wrote product led SEO the organization. Why behind building your organic growth strategy at the time when that was released had to have been one of the biggest SEO book releases. I remember Eli. Eli, say hello. Thanks for having me. And thanks for making me equal to an. I think equal to. Equal to an. Crystal Carter, head of SEO communications here at wix. She does everything under the sun, but she is always on these webinars. So if you've been here before, I'm sure you've already, you're familiar with her crystal. You're going to be smoothing us along with the housekeeping, right?
Yes, yes. So, hello to the webinar fam. And I'm really just here to fangirl at some of my favorite SEOs, particularly who've been talking about this topic a lot. So you're really in for a treat. I'm so grateful to have them here. So we are going to be, in terms of housekeeping, going to do a little faq. First of all, yes, this webinar is being recorded. If somebody joins later, just tell them, yes, it's being recorded. People always ask, and it's good that people are engaged. The webinar will be posted on YouTube. You can also watch our old webinars on YouTube and we'll send you the link in an email after. After it's posted. And you can also ask questions in the Q and A panel, which is in the. In the same sort of area where you saw the chat. And we will be curating those as we go along as. As best we can. And we will also be sort of taking A taking sort of the themes and trying to make sure that we can address those in our Q and A section as well. And also make sure that you check out future webinars at the WIX SEO Learning Hub webinar. Got another one coming up next month talking about GA4 and lots of things there. In terms of agendas, we've just done the introductions and the way we're going to go through this is first we're going to hear from Ann Smarty. She's going to talk to us about AI overviews, sge, that whole thing with regards to brand and then we're going to hear from Eli Schwartz who's going to talk to us about some, some more sort of tactical things around sort of general, general approach to, to SGE AI overviews. And again, as I said, both of them have been in this space for a while so we're going to get some great insights from both. I'm going to share a couple of resources that we have available on the WIX SEO Learning Hub and then we're also going to get into our Q and A and with that I think we can hand off to Anne. You're ready to share your screen?
Anne, I hope I can manage this. It says I cannot manage while you are. I cannot share while you are sharing. So you have to stop that. Let me see that I share the right screen. No, let me try again. Okay.
As a reminder to everyone, we already have some questions for the Q and A later but you also have the ability to put in your questions as they kind of come along here. I see some people are putting in general questions. You have the best possible odds if your question is related to the topic. Sge,
tell me what you are seeing on your screen right now.
We've got your slides there.
Good, because there are a lot of screens to choose from. So just a quick introduction. I've been in this industry for about two decades. I've seen it all right now I'm the founder and this is my latest adventure. I'm the founder of my own agency, Smart Marketing and so it's, it's a new territory for me. So I'm much involved in the what's going in SEO world and it's going something is happening every week, trust me. And when I was first planning to do this presentation, it was still SGE native experience. That was the part of private opt in only lab from Google where they would show you summaries from search results that are generated by AI. And they went public with it about a Week ago. So it's still very fresh, trust me. I had to really scramble for more up to date screenshots of everything that I was talking about because it's very inconsistent. Sometimes they would show it screenshots. It's also overview. Sometimes with the incognito mode Chrome, it's a different story. When you are logged into search to Google it's a different screenshot. So bear with me. I'm sure there will be a lot of things developing from here. There is a, a lot of feedback being shared with Google on this, on this newest feature. It's all over the news. So I'm sure Google will be working on this more and more. So we will have to meet again and talk about this as it is developing. But this is what we're seeing right now. And my topic today is branded search and that's what we are starting with. What is branded search? It is any search query, anything that people search for in Google, Bing or ChatGPT that contains your brand name. So it's very important for any brand name to make sure that they know what people are researching about it and also trying to control those search results more. And this is one of the examples when the featured snippet is not owned by the brand name, but it's answering the question obviously better than any page on that brand site, so it is featured. So the result of this is this, you do not control the sentiment that much and you may lose those people who are searching for any branded query because they find some other site, maybe that could be a competitor, maybe that could be anything else, maybe that could be like this some information article, but it's not, it's not the brand owned. So it could be a last click. So why it is important, I'm sure everyone knows people search for brand names in Google, whether it's navigational when they're trying just to get to the website, or maybe because they like to do their research before they deal with the brand. But people search and this is old statistics. I'm sure it's, it's a very, it's a growing trend because more and more people know how to research brands online. And people, anytime I see a Facebook ad, for example, I never buy anything until I search for that brand name in Google. So and it's all over the place. So it's, it's very important to know what people are searching, what they not want to know about you so that you can answer those questions. Another thing to keep in mind that Google Chrome once was a new Browser. Now it's a very dominant browser online. Anytime you type anything in Google Chrome URL bar, it's automatically a search. So your users, whether it's on mobile device or desktop device, they may see suggestions. When the people start just typing your brand name, they may see those autocomplete suggestions to try and research your brand before even going there. So it's not when people want to do the research, it's sometimes when they just want to go to your website. They may be prompted to research your brand and so search for you. One other thing to keep in mind, any branded query is very high intent worry because people already know you. People already know your brand name. The last thing they want to know is the reassurance that you are trustworthy enough to deal with. So they search for you and whether they see that those reviews or any negativity there or they may be reassured that you're a trusted brand, this determines whether there will be a sale or not. So this is a highly, highly high intent search that you need to keep in mind and dominate to. So what we need to know here is that brand new search is your biggest brand asset. But it's not easy to control because the algorithm decides what it want ranks. But the most important thing is that with Google AI over of years there is even less control over what people can see when they're searching for your brand or they're asking questions about your brand because they are dynamic, they're personalized and they're AI driven. So no one really knows what AI overviews are going to include when it comes to your branded search. Quick thing, quick example from SGE experiment. I could not replicate it now when it's public, but that was an interesting example of how one of the branded search queries was summarized and it was right there. So for reviews for reviews driven query, Google would say this is not a trustworthy brand right away on top of everything else, on top of search results, on top of organic search results, they would say this is not a brand to deal with. And again, I could not replicate it with the public AI overviews. So it's a good sign that Google is moving forward more carefully with those and they are trying to not to show that as much as they would show it with SGE experiment. But this may very well be the future when they're confident enough in their product to show it more and more. For branded search queries, this is the live example of AI reviews as we see them now. For mailchimp reviews, Google would show all the negative and downsides things about mailchimp that People reviewers were finding with the service. Again, not as drastic as with the previous example, but still some.
