Just 3 years ago, Google’s algorithm ranked websites focused heavily on experience, authoritativeness, and quality. If you had these things, Google would reward you by giving your website the top page on a relevant search.
Companies would spend money and time on “content marketing”; stacking their website full of content-rich pages and high-quality backlinks. For example, a plumbing company might build an excellent website hoping that anyone using it for a clogged drain will end up seeing their services and hiring them.
Good results attracted more users, more users brought more ads, and ad money funded better search. This cycle is what made Google a multi-trillion dollar company.
But on May 14th, 2024, Google rolled out something that has done more damage to publishers than any previous search update.
AI Overview.
Instead of companies being rewarded for having quality content, they’re taken advantage of. Google’s Artificial Intelligence synthesizes information from hundreds of quality websites to create a well-written, concise, and skimmable response tailored perfectly to the query.
Companies that once thrived on business from their website are now being starved, some without even knowing why. In the U.S., 68.01% of Google searches end without a single click to a website. Blogs with tons of content that once got customers now get AI bots harvesting their content. With zero reward.
Google spent years encouraging companies to invest in content marketing. Now, it increasingly uses this same content to answer users directly. They’ve stolen the content and left the company in the dust.
Sure, AI Overviews can help users find answers faster. The problem is that this convenience shifts the value away from publishers who created the content in the first place.
Google is becoming less of a search browser and more of a superintelligent AI search.
Note: some of this content is personal opinion.