Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) seems to be playing by different rules. A recent study found that SGE answers include about 10 links on average, but guess what? Only four of these are unique. What’s more striking is that these AI-generated answers rarely match the top 10 organic search results on Google. In fact, they overlap less than 6% of the time.
Why Should You Care?
If you’re wondering why this matters, it’s because Google SGE could lead to less web traffic for many sites. People are getting their answers directly from SGE, bypassing the need to click through to websites. However, there’s a silver lining. Sites that aren’t making it to Google’s top 10 might get a chance to show up in SGE links.
The Nitty-Gritty Details
Let’s break it down. There’s not much common ground when you pit Google SGE’s content against standard organic search results. Only about 4.5% of URLs in SGE content match those in organic results. Even at the domain level, the match is just 1.6%. This means that SGE is mostly pulling up content that’s different from the usual top-ranking domains.
SGE Links: What's Going On?
On average, each SGE answer displays roughly 10 links, but only four of these are unique, coming from four distinct websites. This implies that some websites get mentioned more than once in the same SGE answer.
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SGE's Presence Across Keywords
In this study, SGE appeared for a whopping 86.8% of the analyzed keywords. This leaves about 13.2% of keywords without any SGE content. Interestingly, the ‘Generate’ button version of SGE, prompting users for an AI response, appeared more frequently than the ‘Show more’ button format.
A Closer Look at the Study
This analysis was a large feat. It covered 1,000 commercial keywords and was conducted over two days in December 2023. The data was gathered from a logged-in user in New York using Google Chrome. The study spanned 10 different categories, ranging from Automotive to Travel & Hospitality.
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