Initially, Google’s AI Overviews was only available in the US with “Search Labs” available in 120 countries in 7 languages, but it is now available in the UK. What does your law firm need to know? Well, AI Overviews are replacing Search Generative Experience (SGE). We’ve previously written about Google’s Search Generative Experience and what this meant for law firms, but let us update you on what you need to know about this new update.
What are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews aims to help searchers find what they are looking for faster and more easily than ever before. In short, when someone searches for something on Google, they will be given an AI-generated answer with key information about the topic. This information will be made up of a variety of sources across the internet and will link to sources.
But what does this mean for your law firm’s content? Well, whilst organic results will still appear below the AI-generated summary, a lot of searchers might think they have the answer once they have read the AI-generated answer. However, AI overviews currently only show on about 15% of search queries.
Where do I find AI Overviews?
AI Overview answers will appear at the top of Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). To find out how to turn AI Overviews on or off, have a look at this article.
What does your law firm need to know about AI Overviews?
Well, if your law firm relies on SEO and you haven’t had a look into AI Overviews, now is the time to do it. According to industry experts, AI Overviews are going to change the way searchers get information drastically and this change could impact the traffic to your website and the number of leads your law firm generates as a result.
What can your law firm do about AI Overviews?
All isn’t lost with the hard work that goes into your law firm’s SEO campaigns, fortunately! As mentioned, AI Overviews will be made up of other information from the internet and link to its sources, and there are ways to optimise your web pages to appear as these sources.
In addition, the law is a complex topic, and likely, Google will not want to share incorrect information with searchers. So, many topics your law firm content answers questions to and searchers are looking for might not appear with an AI Overview to minimise the risk of providing incorrect information.
Finally, suppose Google’s AI Overviews does decide to show answers to questions related to the law, in that case, it is probably only going to be a brief answer where the searcher has more questions, needs more information on the topic or needs to enlist the help of a law firm, so those results appearing high up on the SERPs are still going to be very important.
If you are an SEO client of Conscious, we’re monitoring the changes. We will be in touch with you to help you understand everything you need to know and how you can best optimise your website content for SEO and generate those all-important enquiries. If you aren’t an SEO client of Conscious but have some questions, contact the team at sales@conscious.co.uk or 0117 325 0200.