May 28, 2025 • 14 mins
In this episode of Digital Horizons, James Walker (Managing Director at WHD) and Brian Hastings (Managing Director at Nous) break down how AI-generated summaries in search results are changing SEO, what it means for your business, and how you can still win in the new landscape.
We cover:
- What AI Overviews are and how they appear in search results
- Why click-through rates are plummeting
- What types of keywords are affected (and which aren’t)
- How to optimise your content for answer-driven queries
- Whether SEO is still worth the investment
- The role of local SEO and authority signals
- Real examples from clients seeing both drops and recoveries
60% of searches now result in zero clicks
47% of all Google searches are showing AI overviews
If SEO is part of your marketing strategy, this episode is essential.
Subscribe for weekly episodes on digital marketing trends, tools, and tactics for business owners, marketers, and eCommerce leaders.
Hosted by:
James Walker – Managing Director at WHD
Brian Hastings – Managing Director at Nous
The Digital Horizons Podcast is hosted by:
James Walker - Managing Director WHD
Brian Hastings - Managing Director Nous
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
In some examples we've been running with our
clients, queensland-basedBuilder, for instance.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yeah, you might be featured in this overview, but
if, then, the click-through ratefrom the overview and being
found there is so little, is itmaybe an area that maybe you
need to be investing in otherplaces?
Will Google's AI overviews killyour traffic or is it going to
boost it?
That's what we're talking abouttoday.
In Digital Horizons, I'm joinedby Brian Hastings and I'm James
(00:26):
Walker.
We both run digital marketingagencies and work with all kinds
of businesses across Australia,and we are finding that AI is
obviously becoming more of, Iguess, an opportunity for our
business, but also a threat inmany different areas.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Absolutely.
We both have SEO clients andthis is an area that has got our
clients worried.
We're also seeing trafficfluctuations and I see why I'm
really enjoying the convenienceof the AI summaries in search
results and it is stopping me ina lot of cases going through to
get the rest of the answer fromthe final website, when it's
(01:00):
all delivered neatly in asummary at the top of the search
engine results.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
That's it, and so, if anyone hasn't seen these before
, what we're saying is that youmight type your search in and,
instead of seeing your normalwhat we're used to seeing over
the years if it's a commercialintent or if it's any kind of
search typically you'd see yourGoogle ads, your search ads,
sitting at the top, and normallythere's four of them.
Then you might get into somelocal ads and then you might get
into organic listings if it'snot a local search.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, typically 10 organic listings are on page one
, 10 on page two, followed bysome more ads.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, Yep, and so what is now happening and there
was, I mean, prior to this,there was the snippets, so there
was for some queries you wouldget a bit of text at the top
which was a small snippet butwhich then linked through to the
website source.
So, but which then linkedthrough to the website source,
so you could actually see allright, cool, I want to read more
about this and click through,Because it wasn't providing as
comprehensive as an overview ofwhat we're seeing now.
So in the search results now,what we're seeing is a very
(01:51):
detailed provides you basicallywith the entire answer to your
query all at the top of the page, which is then meaning you
don't need to go anythingfurther.
You basically have got what youcome for and then you can leave
, and so what that's going tothen do is drop click-through
rates and then just stop, Iguess, people clicking through
to the website.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
The thing I really like about it not from a client
perspective but from a userperspective is it will reference
multiple websites in itssummary as well in its overview,
so you can see little icons ofwhere it's gotten this
information, and then it'scombined it to give you a more
well-rounded answer.
So I don't have to go and clickthrough into these different
sites.
So I'm trusting it more andmore as well.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, and whilst I believe that Google's put out
some information saying that weare referencing the site, it's
still going to get clickedthrough, because people are
going to want to click throughand get some more information.
But I don't think as a user,that's the case.
I think that if I see somesources that look pretty
trustworthy, I'm just going tobe like all right, cool, I'm
satisfied with that answer.
I don't need to click throughand then further dive deeper
into that topic.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
I think there'll be instances where the quick answer
is all you needed, but thenthose ones where deeper research
is required, say forresearching a laptop or a piece
of tech.
I get a bit of an idea from thesummary.
But then there have beeninstances where I click the
reference link to get moredetail.
Say I'm looking at policies formy business fair work policies,
(03:13):
for instance.
I get a summary and then Iclick through for the additional
detail.
But I do think it's going toreduce a lot of those small and
quick answers that people usedto click through for because you
sort it you've gotteneverything you need straight
away.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, and I think that the biggest challenge that
this is going to face businessesis when people have invested,
especially over a long time,into their SEO and they've built
out some really good resourcesthat are top of funnel answering
questions.
So it's the kind of stuff wherepeople are like how do I do
this?
How do I do this?
A really good strategy for SEOis to be able to target that
long tail keywords and so thatway you can drive people through
to your website.
You're able to then remarketthem on social media.
(03:51):
You're able to remarket them onGoogle display and all the
other channels, youtube and thenbring them back further down
your funnel with more, I guess,offer based or other types of
campaigns.
So really, this is going towipe out a lot of that top of
funnel traffic which peoplewould be really reliant on for
bringing volume to the website.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, absolutely so.
We've covered what it lookslike.
You can see in the example thatwe'll put up on screen how far
down those traditional organiclistings now are on the page
when you have an AI overview atthe top.
In some cases, if there arerich snippets under that or any
other details in between, it canbe a couple of scrolls down the
(04:28):
page before you get to whattraditionally has been the
target, the number one organiclisting.
It's now less and less of value.
So is it going to spell the endfor the value and investing in
SEO, or is there an opportunitythere for businesses who play
into this AI overviews approachand serve great content?
(04:50):
Let's dive into that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So I think that the first thing businesses need to
be doing is thinking about well,how can they provide
information on their websitethat is going to answer the
questions, Because that's goingto be the only way you're going
to get featured in theseoverviews.
So if you want to stand achance at all, you need to make
sure that you are providinginformation that is going to be
very clearly answering questionsand also doing it in a cluster,
so you don't want to just havelike one answer for one thing.
You want to make sure that allright.
(05:12):
If someone's talking about, oh,how do I start a podcast, you
don't want to just answer thatone question.
You want to then be like how doI then upload my podcast to
Spotify?
How do I do all the differentthings?
That is going to, I guess, takepeople through that journey of
being able to answer thatquestion, so that you're being
consistent across your messagingand also then Google isn't
going to see you as an authoritywithin the space to be able to
then provide the information.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Absolutely, let's say that's the first tip or
approach for winning when itcomes to AI overviews.
It's optimizing your contentfor answers to questions rather
than just general content.
I really like that point aboutclustering similar content
together to show Google thatyou've got variances of answers
(05:52):
to similar questions, so that itcan pull different concepts
into its summary if needed, andyou can use bullet points, faqs
or semantic structure to help itin its job of pulling together
its AI overview.
The second part of that, whichwas that clustering, I think is
really important.
If you've got a series of blogtopics about the same general
(06:12):
question, try to group thosetogether to indicate to Google
that these are on the samesubject.
The second thing you can do isdouble down on expertise-driven
content.
So AI pulls from trustedsources.
You've got to become one ofthose, yes.
So what does that mean?
Use the author bios.
This is where traditional SEOreally starts to sing.
Is the link equity to your sitebetter than your competitors
(06:35):
that are offering the samecontent?
How do you make sure your siteis seen as as authoritative as
your competitors who are tryingto serve the same content?
So you've got to be a reputablesource and all of the previous
SEO factors bundle in togetherto determine whether you're a
reputable source.
So that's where I thinkcontinuing SEO is still really
(06:56):
important to help win in the AIoverview space.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, but I guess also the payoff for the SEO
investment into this.
Is it going to be worth whatyou're going to get out of it?
Because, as we're saying, yeah,you might be featured in this
overview, but if then theclick-through rate from the
overview and being found thereis so little, is it maybe an
area that maybe you need to beinvesting in other places
Because the payoff may just notbe there.
(07:21):
Like, I know that SEO is not awhen done well, is not a very
cheap investment, but it can payback very well if you are
getting that organic trafficthrough to your website,
especially for commercial intentsearches.
But if you'll find on the trackthat it's all right, cool, you
spent all this money to getactually featured or listed, but
then you're like well, no one'sclicking anyway, people are
seeing my brand there a littlebit.
So it's going to be a littlebit hard to measure what that
(07:41):
outcome is, but it maypotentially lead to well, this
is going to be too expensive ortoo hard to rank for the outcome
that's going to be providedfrom Google and they're just
going to be focusing on the adside of things.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah that is a factor you'd have to continue to
monitor.
Is the investment at the samelevel worth it, considering the
lower potential of people goingdown to click your listing?
In some examples we've beenrunning with our clients a
Queensland-based builder, forinstance we saw with the
introduction of AI overviewsinitial drop in traffic, but
(08:14):
with the addition of somequestion-based answers to the
content that they haveimplementing some of these
tactics, we saw in two months itfluctuate and come back again
and a higher organic searchtraffic than before.
Now there's so many variablesthere it's in the building
industry.
Demand can really impactwhether it's gone up.
(08:36):
By implementing some of thesetactics, we saw a return to what
it was previously and more.
Also, I think Google's stilltesting and learning how much it
relies on these and where ituses them.
You've got some informationthere on when it is not being
used and when it is.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, so it's not being used on commercial intent
searches because obviouslythat's going to mess with the ad
revenue.
So commercial intent and localsearch is not being done.
That currently is not areaswhere it's showing up.
So if you're searching for, say, buy a I don't know a
microphone near me, an AIsummary is not going to come up
because Google obviously wantsto show it shopping ads, it
wants to show it search ads andit wants you to be clicking on
(09:16):
those because that's where it'sgenerating its revenue from, but
it's more on the info-seeking.
that, really top of finalcontent, is where we're seeing
the AI overviews popping up atthe moment.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
That's right and in this Queensland-based builder
example that's very similar towhat we're seeing.
There is queries about buildersbuilders in my area they're all
still cruising along.
We're still working on theorganic listings in that space
to outdo the competitors.
But where we've seen thatchallenge is in the top of
(09:48):
funnel research how to plan ahouse, build facade options,
things like that where AIsummaries are starting to pop in
.
But what we're starting to seeis where our content is starting
to be served in those summaries.
But you're right, there is alesser need for the user to
click through from that content.
But we are getting that brandrecognition of our content being
(10:11):
referenced in the AI summary.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
How valuable that is, I don't know it's going to be
hard to measure at this point.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, I'm trying to think of if I remembered the
last reference point from an AIsummary.
I don't know at this stage.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Maybe that's it.
Maybe it is that consistency aswe're talking about with the
clusters, and making sure that,all right, well, someone's
searching for information aroundbuilding a house and every time
they pop up they're searching.
In that summary, your brand ispopping up.
Then that's got to have somevalue in when they're making the
decision as to who to go to.
Yeah, but very hard to measure.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So too, but very hard to measure.
So we've talked about doublingdown on expertise-driven content
, so be authoritative.
The first thing we actuallyspoke about was optimising for
questions and answers in yourcontent bullet points, faqs and
so on.
We've not covered the local SEOside of things, so this is an
area where it's really notserving summaries as much and
it's favouring local results.
So if your strategy has ignoredyour local SEO and I would
(11:04):
highly suggest you don't, butthis is an area where there is
still that main opportunity foryou to appear to local relevant
searches looking for yourbusiness or services nearby.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, so this is where we're talking about
someone searching for, say, bestelectrician in Brisbane.
That search they're currentlynot being impacted by AI
overviews.
If we're then going into how tounclog a drain, then that
search 100% is going to have anAI overview showing you, you
know, providing the answer there.
So I guess that's where you'regoing to be differentiating the
types of keywords and the typesof search terms and phrases that
you want to be targeting thatthere's that more commercial
(11:36):
intent there in local searchintent there in local search?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think another thing you canbe doing, another tip for
winning in this world of AIoverviews is to monitor the
performance of your search termsusing Search Console, with the
view of trying to find how AIoverviews are impacting your
search.
So it may not be an issue inyour industry, it may not be an
issue for your business yet, butit is important to be able to
identify if there is a drop inorganic traffic.
(12:04):
Is it due to your prospectsgetting the answers from AI
overviews?
And then you can do somethingabout it.
If you see that you can startto introduce answer-driven
content and leverage this localSEO side of things.
So how big of a deal are AIoverviews?
We talked about some approachesto win in this space, but the
reason we're talking about thisis it's big news.
(12:26):
This is reshaping the wayGoogle search works.
In fact, the rollout globallyis impacting a huge amount of
searches.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
We've got some stats on that, so pretty surprising
numbers here.
So we've got 47% of allsearches are now being served.
An AI overview.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, we'd seen some conflicting information about
how much it's been rolled out indifferent countries and
specifically Australia, but it'swell and truly here.
The really scary stat is 60% ofall searches in Google are now
resulting in a zero-click search.
So they're either getting theinformation they want from the
search engine results page orseeing an AI overview and
(13:04):
getting the information theywant.
So for every 100 searches inGoogle, 60% of them aren't going
any further.
They're getting what they need.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
And so this is going to be leading to some extremely
big changes in the way that theorganic search results are going
to be generating traffic.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, absolutely and I definitely think this is an
opportunity, but it's wrapped upin a big threat of the loss of
traffic and it's changing theway businesses need to think
about how they're engaging withprospects, potential customers,
through search.
Having your answer deliveredwill be the most important, as
well as trying to get thosehighly likely to convert clicks
(13:41):
through at a mid and bottom offunnel.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yep.
So I guess, as everything withAI, this is going to be an
ever-changing situation.
Some of these stats we'relooking at are actually from
December 2024.
So I imagine that that wouldhave changed and shifted since
then, but that's the most recentinformation we have there.
Thank you for watching DigitalHorizons today.
I hope everyone's taken a lotout of this and thinking about
what their organic strategy isgoing to look like and how
(14:03):
things will change going forward.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Thank you.
In some examples we've been running with our
clients, queensland-basedBuilder, for instance.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yeah, you might be featured in this overview, but
if, then, the click-through ratefrom the overview and being
found there is so little, is itmaybe an area that maybe you
need to be investing in otherplaces?
Will Google's AI overviews killyour traffic or is it going to
boost it?
That's what we're talking abouttoday.
In Digital Horizons, I'm joinedby Brian Hastings and I'm James
(00:26):
Walker.
We both run digital marketingagencies and work with all kinds
of businesses across Australia,and we are finding that AI is
obviously becoming more of, Iguess, an opportunity for our
business, but also a threat inmany different areas.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Absolutely.
We both have SEO clients andthis is an area that has got our
clients worried.
We're also seeing trafficfluctuations and I see why I'm
really enjoying the convenienceof the AI summaries in search
results and it is stopping me ina lot of cases going through to
get the rest of the answer fromthe final website, when it's
(01:00):
all delivered neatly in asummary at the top of the search
engine results.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
That's it, and so, if anyone hasn't seen these before
, what we're saying is that youmight type your search in and,
instead of seeing your normalwhat we're used to seeing over
the years if it's a commercialintent or if it's any kind of
search typically you'd see yourGoogle ads, your search ads,
sitting at the top, and normallythere's four of them.
Then you might get into somelocal ads and then you might get
into organic listings if it'snot a local search.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, typically 10 organic listings are on page one
, 10 on page two, followed bysome more ads.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, Yep, and so what is now happening and there
was, I mean, prior to this,there was the snippets, so there
was for some queries you wouldget a bit of text at the top
which was a small snippet butwhich then linked through to the
website source.
So, but which then linkedthrough to the website source,
so you could actually see allright, cool, I want to read more
about this and click through,Because it wasn't providing as
comprehensive as an overview ofwhat we're seeing now.
So in the search results now,what we're seeing is a very
(01:51):
detailed provides you basicallywith the entire answer to your
query all at the top of the page, which is then meaning you
don't need to go anythingfurther.
You basically have got what youcome for and then you can leave
, and so what that's going tothen do is drop click-through
rates and then just stop, Iguess, people clicking through
to the website.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
The thing I really like about it not from a client
perspective but from a userperspective is it will reference
multiple websites in itssummary as well in its overview,
so you can see little icons ofwhere it's gotten this
information, and then it'scombined it to give you a more
well-rounded answer.
So I don't have to go and clickthrough into these different
sites.
So I'm trusting it more andmore as well.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, and whilst I believe that Google's put out
some information saying that weare referencing the site, it's
still going to get clickedthrough, because people are
going to want to click throughand get some more information.
But I don't think as a user,that's the case.
I think that if I see somesources that look pretty
trustworthy, I'm just going tobe like all right, cool, I'm
satisfied with that answer.
I don't need to click throughand then further dive deeper
into that topic.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
I think there'll be instances where the quick answer
is all you needed, but thenthose ones where deeper research
is required, say forresearching a laptop or a piece
of tech.
I get a bit of an idea from thesummary.
But then there have beeninstances where I click the
reference link to get moredetail.
Say I'm looking at policies formy business fair work policies,
(03:13):
for instance.
I get a summary and then Iclick through for the additional
detail.
But I do think it's going toreduce a lot of those small and
quick answers that people usedto click through for because you
sort it you've gotteneverything you need straight
away.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, and I think that the biggest challenge that
this is going to face businessesis when people have invested,
especially over a long time,into their SEO and they've built
out some really good resourcesthat are top of funnel answering
questions.
So it's the kind of stuff wherepeople are like how do I do
this?
How do I do this?
A really good strategy for SEOis to be able to target that
long tail keywords and so thatway you can drive people through
to your website.
You're able to then remarketthem on social media.
(03:51):
You're able to remarket them onGoogle display and all the
other channels, youtube and thenbring them back further down
your funnel with more, I guess,offer based or other types of
campaigns.
So really, this is going towipe out a lot of that top of
funnel traffic which peoplewould be really reliant on for
bringing volume to the website.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, absolutely so.
We've covered what it lookslike.
You can see in the example thatwe'll put up on screen how far
down those traditional organiclistings now are on the page
when you have an AI overview atthe top.
In some cases, if there arerich snippets under that or any
other details in between, it canbe a couple of scrolls down the
(04:28):
page before you get to whattraditionally has been the
target, the number one organiclisting.
It's now less and less of value.
So is it going to spell the endfor the value and investing in
SEO, or is there an opportunitythere for businesses who play
into this AI overviews approachand serve great content?
(04:50):
Let's dive into that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
So I think that the first thing businesses need to
be doing is thinking about well,how can they provide
information on their websitethat is going to answer the
questions, Because that's goingto be the only way you're going
to get featured in theseoverviews.
So if you want to stand achance at all, you need to make
sure that you are providinginformation that is going to be
very clearly answering questionsand also doing it in a cluster,
so you don't want to just havelike one answer for one thing.
You want to make sure that allright.
(05:12):
If someone's talking about, oh,how do I start a podcast, you
don't want to just answer thatone question.
You want to then be like how doI then upload my podcast to
Spotify?
How do I do all the differentthings?
That is going to, I guess, takepeople through that journey of
being able to answer thatquestion, so that you're being
consistent across your messagingand also then Google isn't
going to see you as an authoritywithin the space to be able to
then provide the information.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Absolutely, let's say that's the first tip or
approach for winning when itcomes to AI overviews.
It's optimizing your contentfor answers to questions rather
than just general content.
I really like that point aboutclustering similar content
together to show Google thatyou've got variances of answers
(05:52):
to similar questions, so that itcan pull different concepts
into its summary if needed, andyou can use bullet points, faqs
or semantic structure to help itin its job of pulling together
its AI overview.
The second part of that, whichwas that clustering, I think is
really important.
If you've got a series of blogtopics about the same general
(06:12):
question, try to group thosetogether to indicate to Google
that these are on the samesubject.
The second thing you can do isdouble down on expertise-driven
content.
So AI pulls from trustedsources.
You've got to become one ofthose, yes.
So what does that mean?
Use the author bios.
This is where traditional SEOreally starts to sing.
Is the link equity to your sitebetter than your competitors
(06:35):
that are offering the samecontent?
How do you make sure your siteis seen as as authoritative as
your competitors who are tryingto serve the same content?
So you've got to be a reputablesource and all of the previous
SEO factors bundle in togetherto determine whether you're a
reputable source.
So that's where I thinkcontinuing SEO is still really
(06:56):
important to help win in the AIoverview space.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Yeah, but I guess also the payoff for the SEO
investment into this.
Is it going to be worth whatyou're going to get out of it?
Because, as we're saying, yeah,you might be featured in this
overview, but if then theclick-through rate from the
overview and being found thereis so little, is it maybe an
area that maybe you need to beinvesting in other places
Because the payoff may just notbe there.
(07:21):
Like, I know that SEO is not awhen done well, is not a very
cheap investment, but it can payback very well if you are
getting that organic trafficthrough to your website,
especially for commercial intentsearches.
But if you'll find on the trackthat it's all right, cool, you
spent all this money to getactually featured or listed, but
then you're like well, no one'sclicking anyway, people are
seeing my brand there a littlebit.
So it's going to be a littlebit hard to measure what that
(07:41):
outcome is, but it maypotentially lead to well, this
is going to be too expensive ortoo hard to rank for the outcome
that's going to be providedfrom Google and they're just
going to be focusing on the adside of things.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah that is a factor you'd have to continue to
monitor.
Is the investment at the samelevel worth it, considering the
lower potential of people goingdown to click your listing?
In some examples we've beenrunning with our clients a
Queensland-based builder, forinstance we saw with the
introduction of AI overviewsinitial drop in traffic, but
(08:14):
with the addition of somequestion-based answers to the
content that they haveimplementing some of these
tactics, we saw in two months itfluctuate and come back again
and a higher organic searchtraffic than before.
Now there's so many variablesthere it's in the building
industry.
Demand can really impactwhether it's gone up.
(08:36):
By implementing some of thesetactics, we saw a return to what
it was previously and more.
Also, I think Google's stilltesting and learning how much it
relies on these and where ituses them.
You've got some informationthere on when it is not being
used and when it is.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Yeah, so it's not being used on commercial intent
searches because obviouslythat's going to mess with the ad
revenue.
So commercial intent and localsearch is not being done.
That currently is not areaswhere it's showing up.
So if you're searching for, say, buy a I don't know a
microphone near me, an AIsummary is not going to come up
because Google obviously wantsto show it shopping ads, it
wants to show it search ads andit wants you to be clicking on
(09:16):
those because that's where it'sgenerating its revenue from, but
it's more on the info-seeking.
that, really top of finalcontent, is where we're seeing
the AI overviews popping up atthe moment.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
That's right and in this Queensland-based builder
example that's very similar towhat we're seeing.
There is queries about buildersbuilders in my area they're all
still cruising along.
We're still working on theorganic listings in that space
to outdo the competitors.
But where we've seen thatchallenge is in the top of
(09:48):
funnel research how to plan ahouse, build facade options,
things like that where AIsummaries are starting to pop in
.
But what we're starting to seeis where our content is starting
to be served in those summaries.
But you're right, there is alesser need for the user to
click through from that content.
But we are getting that brandrecognition of our content being
(10:11):
referenced in the AI summary.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
How valuable that is, I don't know it's going to be
hard to measure at this point.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Yeah, I'm trying to think of if I remembered the
last reference point from an AIsummary.
I don't know at this stage.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Maybe that's it.
Maybe it is that consistency aswe're talking about with the
clusters, and making sure that,all right, well, someone's
searching for information aroundbuilding a house and every time
they pop up they're searching.
In that summary, your brand ispopping up.
Then that's got to have somevalue in when they're making the
decision as to who to go to.
Yeah, but very hard to measure.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So too, but very hard to measure.
So we've talked about doublingdown on expertise-driven content
, so be authoritative.
The first thing we actuallyspoke about was optimising for
questions and answers in yourcontent bullet points, faqs and
so on.
We've not covered the local SEOside of things, so this is an
area where it's really notserving summaries as much and
it's favouring local results.
So if your strategy has ignoredyour local SEO and I would
(11:04):
highly suggest you don't, butthis is an area where there is
still that main opportunity foryou to appear to local relevant
searches looking for yourbusiness or services nearby.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, so this is where we're talking about
someone searching for, say, bestelectrician in Brisbane.
That search they're currentlynot being impacted by AI
overviews.
If we're then going into how tounclog a drain, then that
search 100% is going to have anAI overview showing you, you
know, providing the answer there.
So I guess that's where you'regoing to be differentiating the
types of keywords and the typesof search terms and phrases that
you want to be targeting thatthere's that more commercial
(11:36):
intent there in local searchintent there in local search?
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, absolutely.
I think another thing you canbe doing, another tip for
winning in this world of AIoverviews is to monitor the
performance of your search termsusing Search Console, with the
view of trying to find how AIoverviews are impacting your
search.
So it may not be an issue inyour industry, it may not be an
issue for your business yet, butit is important to be able to
identify if there is a drop inorganic traffic.
(12:04):
Is it due to your prospectsgetting the answers from AI
overviews?
And then you can do somethingabout it.
If you see that you can startto introduce answer-driven
content and leverage this localSEO side of things.
So how big of a deal are AIoverviews?
We talked about some approachesto win in this space, but the
reason we're talking about thisis it's big news.
(12:26):
This is reshaping the wayGoogle search works.
In fact, the rollout globallyis impacting a huge amount of
searches.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
We've got some stats on that, so pretty surprising
numbers here.
So we've got 47% of allsearches are now being served.
An AI overview.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Yeah, we'd seen some conflicting information about
how much it's been rolled out indifferent countries and
specifically Australia, but it'swell and truly here.
The really scary stat is 60% ofall searches in Google are now
resulting in a zero-click search.
So they're either getting theinformation they want from the
search engine results page orseeing an AI overview and
(13:04):
getting the information theywant.
So for every 100 searches inGoogle, 60% of them aren't going
any further.
They're getting what they need.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
And so this is going to be leading to some extremely
big changes in the way that theorganic search results are going
to be generating traffic.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Yeah, absolutely and I definitely think this is an
opportunity, but it's wrapped upin a big threat of the loss of
traffic and it's changing theway businesses need to think
about how they're engaging withprospects, potential customers,
through search.
Having your answer deliveredwill be the most important, as
well as trying to get thosehighly likely to convert clicks
(13:41):
through at a mid and bottom offunnel.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Yep.
So I guess, as everything withAI, this is going to be an
ever-changing situation.
Some of these stats we'relooking at are actually from
December 2024.
So I imagine that that wouldhave changed and shifted since
then, but that's the most recentinformation we have there.
Thank you for watching DigitalHorizons today.
I hope everyone's taken a lotout of this and thinking about
what their organic strategy isgoing to look like and how
(14:03):
things will change going forward.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.