What to know
- Google is starting to test Search Generative Experience to a subset of users in the US, even those who didn’t sign up.
- Google SGE has been available to testers from Search Labs since last year.
- The AI-powered search generates summaries for user queries so they can quickly get the results they’re looking for.
Some users in the US are starting to get AI-generated summaries to their queries at the top of the search page. The new search pulls information from the top results, provides reference links and images, and summarizes the information in bite-sized sentences, allowing users to get answers to their queries quickly.
This may have come as a surprise to some, especially since the Search Generative Experience, or SGE as it is called, is only available for those who’ve opted into it via Search Labs.
Google has confirmed that it is testing SGE on a slightly wider scale with certain queries. This is why you may see your search results being summarized by AI at the top of the search page, even if you haven’t signed up for it. This is true for Google Search on smartphones as well.
Since its announcement last year, SGE has been used by users around the globe, and has handled billions of queries, as mentioned by Liz Reid, Google’s new Head of Search.
With the AI summaries gaining traction among users, this may start to hurt websites that depend on users landing on their pages to gain the information they’re looking for. Google has tried to placate websites by maintaining that they’re “committed to continue sending valuable traffic to sites across the web”. Whether or not they remain true to the words is yet to be seen, but the average user will nevertheless benefit from the introduction of AI to traditional search.
Those interested in hopping on the SGE bandwagon and understand how it works can benefit from our complete guide on getting started with Google SGE.
