Google I/O: How Your Business Needs to Adapt to Google’s Search Generative Experience

It’s a wrap as far as Google’s annual I/O conference is concerned and the theme across their innovations is none other than Artificial Intelligence. Of course, the anticipation around this year’s conference was how the search engine giant is integrating Generative AI with its search user experience and that will be our focus here as well. We’ll walk through the big changes that lie ahead as announced at Google I/O, and what your business needs to keep an eye out for.  

Google I/O 2023 Updates: 

• Search Generative Experience (SGE) 

In development by Search Labs, Google has branded the project ‘Supercharging Search with generative AI’.   Using LLMs (Large Language Models) specifically MUM and their recent PaLM 2 with Generative AI, Google is bringing multi-search (text with images & videos) to the forefront of the user experience on search. 

• Helpful Content with ‘Perspectives’ 

With Perspectives, Google is going to deliver expert opinions or user feedback that will be sourced from conversations on popular forums and from channels such as YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.  

• Vertical Experiences 

Whether it’s dining, local searches, or shopping, a single prompt will offer a range of personalized result types for users to make a faster buying decision. Using Google’s Shopping Graph, you will see a description of the product, key details such as product images and videos, availability, delivery time, reviews from other shoppers, etc.  

• Sponsored Tag for Paid Advertisements 

To offer transparency to their end users when clicking on a link, Google has confirmed that they are going to have clear and distinguishable Ad spaces across the page which will be marked by the ‘Sponsored’ tag.  

Milestone’s Take: Search Generative Experience impact and how your business needs to adapt 

We’re going to be calling out the key changes your business needs to be ready for – to adapt and drive its visibility on search:  

BARD and Google Lens Integration: Visual Search is gaining prominence  

Quoting Wall Street Journal, Google is now making the search experience “visual, snackable, personal, and human,”. Not only are you going to see image and video rich results along with generative AI answers, but with BARD and Google Lens integration, you can now use images as part of your prompts/queries. That’s right, ask a question/prompt using images!  

Action: Optimizing your images for visual search is imperative to grab SERP visibility. In short, follow Google’s image SEO best practices as elucidated by Google’s John Muller. Ensure quality and safe search, include descriptive titles, captions, filenames, and text for your images. Optimize images for page speed and add schema or structured data to drive entity recognition. Most importantly, treat your images as entities (no duplicate images across locations and channels) for them to be recognized effectively in Google’s Knowledge Graph.  

Zero Click Results Redefined 

With BARD going to be everyone’s first interaction on search, most likely the featured snippet rich result is going to be a thing of the past. But this means that the “new” Zero click results that will be powered by Generative AI will showcase multi-modal results (images, text, video) – in-depth material in a single answer.  

Action: Optimize your content for relevance, expertise, and authority across formats – text, image, video, and voice. Use the Helpful Content guidelines to offer content that relates to the users’ needs and optimize your content for entity recognition using schema. 

Generative AI Content is here to drive efficiency   

Is Google going to rank AI auto-generated content? The answer is yes! Based on their guidelines for AI-generated content, they will reward “High-quality content, however it is produced”. Of course, auto-generated content used for spammy content will be flagged.  

Action: Implement AI in your content creation process to drive creativity and efficiency. After all, SGE is meant to offer multiple insights and viewpoints as a result of a single prompt – the focus on driving efficiency in a creative process.  

SEO Neglected? No Way! Page Experience update and the importance of Foundational SEO 

With Generative AI now going to determine and drive the user experience of search, the question is whether SEO matters. Google has stated that its AI-generative capabilities are founded on its SEO, Search Raters, E-E-A-T (Expertise-Experience-Authority-Trustworthy) Guidelines, and the Helpful Content System to deliver reliable, helpful, and high-quality information to users.   

Foundational SEO is still important for a website’s visibility on search and Google has even added Interaction to Next Paint (INP) as a new metric to their Page Experience Algorithm. INP measures all the other interactions on the page (Not just FID) to determine the actual page latency before an interaction.  

Action: Continue to cover and automate all aspects of foundational SEO – crawlability & indexability, page experience, schema & clickability, content relevancy, and local authority for your websites and social channels. Ensure your content is crafted to the customers’ needs.  

Laser sharp focus on Local Listings and Product/Services management 

With vertical experiences a key aspect of SGE, it is imperative that you manage the profile completeness of your local listings to be found for local or hyper-local searches. In addition, ensure your product and service details are thorough when submitted to Google.  

Action: Not just UNAP, optimize your local listings for profile completeness – descriptions, attributes, amenities, hours of operation, etc. Create content for hyperlocal searches to drive your relevance. Ensure you’ve listed all product/service information (description, price, expiry, etc.) and use schema to drive entity recognition of your offerings and rich result visibility.  

To summarize, Google is leveraging AI to revolutionize its search experience by organizing content across formats into a single snapshot, facilitating faster decision-making and learning for users. Maintaining strong foundational SEO practices is crucial for businesses to establish authority, relevance, and visibility on search, while AI ensures efficient delivery of content to users. 

Milestone’s AI Solution: Improving your business’ speed to market and search visibility  

With AI spearheading technological innovations, Milestone has integrated AI into its solutions to drive efficiency for businesses to reach their customers effortlessly.  

• Milestone’s Digital Asset Manager: Not just asset centralization, Milestone DAM optimizes assets to power visibility right from the get-go. With entity identification, safe search, and auto-generation of meta details using AI, your images are optimized for search relevance automatically.    
• Milestone Blog Studio: From content drafts to keyword generation, and carrying out the entire SEO checklist to rank, we’ve automated the entire process using AI to help your business speed to market with quality and relevant content.  
• Milestone FAQ Manager: Our AI/ML approach automates how your business generates and manages its FAQs and conversational content across your website, local channels, and voice devices.  
• Milestone Schema Manager: Using AI with Milestone Schema Manager, you can now auto-deploy schema across pages, and group URLs, detect content changes or drifts, and derive business insights from your performance to improve your rich result visibility.  

The opportunities are abundant with AI, from seamless website migrations to content creation, reinventing your user experience and more, and at Milestone, we are here to ensure that your business has the best technology available to you – for you to scale your presence effortlessly.  

For more information, contact us at sales@milestoneinternet.com or call us at 408-200-2211.