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It’s here. Google’s biggest foray into AI in its search engine. After a long period of user testing, it appears Google’s AI Overview has finally been introduced to the mainstream public.

Initially, SEO analysts were struggling with Google’s software update. Google’s AI Overview was showing sources outside the top 10 organic results. This meant some less-than-authoritative and trustworthy sources were appearing in AI Overviews, at the top of searches.

In retaliation to this, Google got called out for providing incorrect and misleading information, which lead to them reducing the software’s visibility while they improved it in the background over the past three months.

Now, seoClarity have found that the sources cited in Google AI Overviews now match one or more of the webpages from the top 10 Google organic search results 99.5% of the time.

Google has shared that they’re still refining and improving their technology, with plans to add the following:

Video search – moving past voice search technology, users will be able to take a video and get an answer or solution without typing a single character.

‘Break it down’ – users will have three options to adjust the information, with the choice of ‘original’, ‘simpler’ and ‘break it down’, the information-filled response.

What does this mean for SEO?

This is great news for SEO experts. If Google are incorporating more traditional search ranking signals as part of its AI model, then search optimisation can continue as usual. Despite the initial concerns that Google AI Overviews would impact website traffic, for now at least, this is not the case.

Please be warned: it will be vital to monitor the evolving impact of AI Overviews on search traffic, as it could influence SEO strategies and content visibility in the long term.