What is Google Search Generative Experience?

AI is the future of search, we all know this. With the recent developments in AI technologies and tools such as Google Bard and ChatGPT becoming more and more popular, it is only a matter of time before AI becomes one of the main ways to search.

What Is Generative AI?

Generative Artificial Intelligence is a tool or software that is capable of creating media such as text and images from text prompts entered by a user.

This means you can give a generative AI model a descriptive sentence and it will try to provide useful information. You can use it to collate or to expand information without having to research it for yourself as the AI will do all of the leg work for you.

Google Search Generative Experience: Explained

The Google Search Generative Experience, or SGE, is a feature coming for Google Search that is currently being tested by Google Search Labs in the US. It looks set to rival Microsoft Copilot with its search integration.

Users can use SGE to be provided with a snapshot of what they are asking for along with links for further reading. It can also pull in reviews, videos and more. You can even ask it to make comparisons between reviews on local listings.

Imagine being able to compare product reviews or restaurant ratings without needing to trawl through reviews and even being able to ask follow-up questions based on the results you get. If you want to see a snapshot of SGE in action then check out it out here.

What Does SGE Mean For Search?

Well, as of right now it’s too early to say. With the beta only just being rolled out and tested to users in the US, it’s hard to gauge what impact this will have on search until UK users can get their hands on the beta. Even then there will be a longer time until the full official rollout.

The likely impact will be how SEOs use keywords to track rankings and traffic stats. This is most likely going to be bigger, better ‘People Also Ask’ style searches. This means that keywords and content will need to shift towards answering user’s questions even more than it already does.

The other impact it may have is in traffic numbers. If a user is getting all their research and reviews from the Google SERP page, then they may not even need to click through to your site. This could be reflected as a lower amount of traffic since users will only have a need to leave the results page if they want to convert.

However, with a drop in sessions and people only coming to your site to convert, we would hope to expect high conversion rates. This is because the people coming to your site either haven’t had their questions answered and will get in touch, or they have their answers and are ready to follow up with a lead or purchase.

While it’s hard to say exactly what the Google Search Generative Experience will change when it does arrive, it’s a safe bet that it could change the landscape of search as we know it. We will be continuing to monitor any betas and updates as they come. In the meantime, if you want to get your business ready for the next big change, please contact our marketing team for SEO services.