Google's AI Overviews now appear in the top position in 88% of cases, potentially shifting how search traffic flows to websites. Eric Siu and Neil Patel discuss what this means for SEO, personalization, and how platforms like Perplexity are already changing where people find information.
Did you know that AI overviews, it's now shifted to 12.4% of the time, AI overviews are not position 1? It's like showing people also ask at the top, or where are they putting it? Just sometimes depending on the query type, an AI overview may be helpful, maybe they're not sure. So then they may, I bet you they're trying to figure out, should we show AI overviews even if it may not be the exact thing, but just put it somewhere in the middle?
Yeah.
Versus, Always showcasing it at the top. Dude, it's fascinating.
Yesterday, because I opened my mom's phone, right? There's some stuff I need to take care of. And I opened these AI Overviews, it was in Chinese. I was like, whoa, like, they're getting ahead of it. They're pretty all over. I'm like, the fact that they have it for Chinese already means that it's— they're very serious about it.
Yes.
Yeah. Well, okay. I mean, I don't really have much to say besides like, yeah, that makes sense because Google tests a lot. But other than that, I don't have a reaction.
No, but going back to Google, I was talking with Steve, you know, from My Wife Quit Her Job. Is it My Wife Quit Her Job?
MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, yeah.
Yeah, so he has a podcast. I was on his podcast earlier.
Steve Chu, yeah.
Yeah, good guy. And we were talking about Google AI Overviews and AI mode and how Google is going to adapt. And, you know, I know you and I are on the same page. We don't think ChatGPT is going to kill Google, but we also don't think Google is going to kill ChatGPT. We think it's going to coexist just like You know, YouTube, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, et cetera.
All right, so I wanted to take a moment to tell you about my podcast co-host Neil's agency called NP Digital, and they work with a whole host of global companies or global organizations. Also, Neil has SEO tools such as Ubersuggest and AnswerThePublic. All you have to do is go to npdigital.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side.
But we are talking about AI mode and Google AI overviews. And a lot of people have been discussing this and they're just like, what do you think the platform is going to be for search? And I was like, well, if you really look at it, there's an app. You can have the ChatGPT app or a Google app. It really is just a box or a bar and you're just typing in your search query or prompt. And it doesn't matter what you want to call it, a prompt and a search query or a keyword that you're typing in, it's the same thing. The only thing that's different is it's evolved in which a keyword could be more descriptive or a sentence and the platform is now able to answer it thoroughly and accurately or much more accurately than they could before. And I was like, I don't think it's going to— and I'm curious in your take, I don't think it's going to be AI mode, right? Which was a version of ChatGPT or a traditional search result with 10 blue links or a part blue links with AI overuse. I believe Google with the technology they have and even ChatGPT, they're sophisticated enough to figure out what you're typing in, what you're looking for to be satisfied, and they'll adjust the type of view and the screen and how they display everything, whether it's like an AI mode or traditional result or a hybrid with AI overviews versus this is going to be the default view. Because if you're just looking for the weather in Los Angeles, California, or 2 2, do you really care for the 10 blue links?
No, right? Yeah. And they've, to that point, they've been doing that. They've been going in that direction already. And now when you search emojis, you can actually, it'll show it in like the top, right? And so my, I think where you're going with this is every experience is going to be customized just with how all this technology is going. And that's how B2B marketing has been going too. Like people talk about ABM, like that's just personalization, but everybody wants personalization.
Yeah.
And the technology has gotten there now where everyone has a high-speed connection and, you know, everyone's using tokens now to generate all these different results. And it's the costs are getting cheaper too. So why would you not just have a personalized result for everyone, which then also will continue to decrease website traffic?
Yes, but the conversion data that everyone's showcasing, whether it's Ahrefs or some of the graphs that I put out on my X profile, the conversion data to visitor ratio is through the roof. Like the conversions are not as much as organic search, but it's getting up there like half to more than half. And the visitor count is call it like 1/20th. So it's showing that the conversions is through the roof. So even if your traffic goes down, you need to optimize to be included in these LLMs because it's driving a lot of revenue.
You know, that I think last week we talked about this $30 billion a year revenue company that reached out and they were like, yeah, well, we saw this article that was listed in Perplexity and it was tied to one of our blog posts about agentic workflows or whatever. And I don't know, it just goes to show you that behavior is changing because again, it came through Perplexity, which cited one of the blog posts.
So, and to clarify, Eric's at $30 billion. It's a massive-sized corporation and they're hitting him up trying to work with him all because of an article found on an LLM platform.
Yeah. All right, guys. So that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, leave, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
