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Google’s self-referential SERPs
It’s time we looked out for ourselves
Build your brand and diversify your traffic
Move on from vanity traffic
There’s a major competitor in your search results: Google.
The other day, Lily Ray (Vice President of SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive) noticed Google had begun surfacing its own storefront for some competitive “Your Money or Your Life” searches.
By Google’s own admission, these kinds of “E-E-A-T” sensitive queries should be reserved for only the most authoritative and knowledgeable health sites.
Instead, they’re being claimed by Google-owned advertorials, touting the benefits of its Pixel Watch.
Google’s self-referential SERPs
I did some digging in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, and noted that 12% of Google Store’s pages have claimed an AI Overview in the last year.
That is no small thing.
For comparison, here are some similarly aligned ecommerce sites, and their respective AI Overview share:
- Samsung: 3.5% AI Overview share
- Apple: 2% AI Overview share
- Amazon: 0.4% AI Overview share
Google’s Store is taking more than double the AI overview real estate of their closest competitors, combined.
- Google Store AI Overview share: 12%
- Google Store competitors’ AI Overview share: 5.9%
And the number of Google Store pages appearing in AI Overviews is on the up.
It’s time we looked out for ourselves
In Q3 2024, Google’s revenue from search advertising reached $49.39 billion, signaling a 12% YoY increase.
And that’s thanks, in large part, to AI Overviews.
Google not only runs ads above and below AI Overviews, it now weaves them in natively.
According to analyst Doug Anmuth from JP Morgan, “AI Overviews are monetizing at roughly the same rate as non-AI searches.”
And Google’s “AI mode”—essentially an AI chat interface—will likely throttle paid advertising.
In short, AI overviews are boosting user engagement and satisfaction, opening up new ad space opportunities, and earning Google a pretty penny.
Meanwhile, we have recently found that AI Overviews reduce SERP clickthrough rate by a staggering 40%, while a similar study from Seer Interactive reports CTR drops of up to 70%.
Right now, we’re distracted with SEO busywork.
Chasing top of the funnel traffic. Creating Google-pleasing content for queries on the very periphery of relevance to our business. Spending untold hours trying to find untapped keywords in an ever-shrinking pool of… untapped keywords. And answering questions that Google is now perfectly capable of answering itself, using our content.
While we’re busy doing Google’s bidding, Google is busy looking out for #1.
Something needs to change.
Now that traffic is harder to come by, we need to refocus on building our brand and generating demand.
But Google is not the place to create that demand.
“Google has become a place people go *after* they discover a need rather than a demand-creation or even demand-nudging platform”Rand Fishkin, Co-founder, SparkToro
“For most companies, SEO is a channel for scaling growth, not achieving product/market fit. It’s a way to add fuel to your fire, not start the fire.”Ryan Law, Director of Content Marketing, Ahrefs
Instead, we should be growing our owned audiences and raising brand awareness—whether that looks like creating subscription content (e.g. newsletters or paywalled articles), investing in direct publishing (e.g. Substack articles), doubling down on podcasting, or developing creative brand content.
Whatever tack you take, brand building is key to visibility beyond Google.
Case in point: new research from Kevin Indig shows that brand search volume is the biggest predictor for visibility in ChatGPT.
Rather than gifting Google your traffic and getting… not a lot in return, focus on strategies that will move the needle for you.
Google’s AI Overviews are 99.2% informational, drawing the majority of their responses from top-of-the-funnel articles.
But some of our latest research shows that navigational (-0.06%) and branded queries (-0.34%) are far less susceptible to CTR decline in Google, vs. informational content which has dropped ~10% on average over the last year.
Forget the box-ticking ultimate guides—the Google-demanded preamble that no one wants to write or read.
Final thoughts
Google has changed. It’s gone from being a reliable partner to prioritizing its own interests—from surfacing its own properties, to recycling our content to power its AI.
There is some hope. Google’s AI Mode is reportedly opening up more search real estate, with reports of ~500 word AI overviews containing up to ~60 links, and opportunities for 2nd or 3rd page results to rank.
But, still, our CTR is down and our AI traffic is modest, while Google develops more features to keep users squarely on-platform.
Getting mentioned in Google’s AI is crucial for brand awareness, that much is true, but ultimately there is less incentive for us to create broad, top-of-the-funnel content to appease the algorithm.
Instead we need to take a leaf out of Google’s book, and prioritize our own interests—building our brand beyond search, focusing on the meaningful traffic that engages and converts, and being strategic about what content we freely offer to AI.
The relationship has fundamentally changed. Google is looking out for #1—and now we need to do the same.