SEO is becoming a complex aspect with the rise of AI tools and search engine evolution. However, Google has extended a helping hand and has lately come up with new documentation on its AI Overviews feature, which is of course a development to significantly impact the SEO as well as search marketing. AI Overviews provide natural language responses in search results. It offers answers and links to web pages facilitating users to explore further. The overviews feature is basically triggered when users seek quick and task-related information.

AI Overviews appears when the search algorithm understands that user is looking for quick information from various sources, like the web and Google’s Knowledge Graph. The feature also benefits creators, ecommerce stores and other businesses. It simultaneously broadens the scope of websites that can receive links from AI Overviews.

The AI Overviews feature collects information from the standard search index of Google and its Knowledge Graph. It involves Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG) system that supplements large language models with external databases to ensure accurate and comprehensive responses.

AI Overviews is automatic and the latest Google documentation suggests adhering to the general guidelines for ranking in regular search is what required for appearing in it. There is no need for special actions. Following Google Search Essentials is enough.

It is suggested to mainly focus on topics instead of keywords. Google’s search technology annotates web pages with concepts. It uses techniques like semantic annotation and neural matching to understand the context of queries. The approach allows Google to recognize the underlying concepts in queries and web pages.

In short, it can be said that even though Google’s AI Overviews feature is reshaping the search landscape, SEO professionals and publishers should follow Google’s existing search guidelines as well as focus on topic relevance.