What is Google's search generative experience (SGE) and how does it affect SEO?
Google's Search Generative Experience, now rolling into AI Overviews, changes how search results appear. Instead of a list of blue links, SGE shows an AI-generated answer at the top of the page, synthesised from multiple sources. For businesses that rely on organic traffic, this shift matters a great deal because the traditional click-through model is no longer guaranteed.
What is SGE exactly?
Google's Search Generative Experience uses generative AI to create answers directly in search results. When a user asks a question, Google does not just return links to pages that might answer it. It reads those pages, summarises the information and presents the answer inline, with source links alongside. The user gets their answer without clicking through to any of the websites that provided the information.
SGE was announced in May 2023 at Google I/O and began rolling out in the US and UK through 2024 and into 2025. It has been gradually merged with what Google now calls AI Overviews, which appear for a growing share of queries every quarter.
How is SGE different from traditional search?
Traditional Google search works by ranking pages according to relevance, authority and user signals. The searcher then picks a result to visit. The business that ranks number one gets the biggest share of clicks.
SGE changes the reward system. The AI answer appears first, gathers information from several sources and displays it in a single block. The sources are credited with links, but the user has less reason to click. Clicks that would have gone to individual pages are now absorbed by the AI answer itself. This is known as zero-click search, and SGE accelerates it.
What does this mean for SEO?
The most direct effect is on click-through rate. When an AI answer satisfies the query in the search results page itself, fewer people click through to individual websites. Early data from the rollout showed that SGE reduced CTR on some informational queries by 10 to 30 per cent.
But the reduction is not uniform across all query types. Transactional queries (buy something, book a service, compare prices) continue to drive clicks because the AI cannot complete the transaction. Informational queries face the biggest CTR drop, while local search with a map pack holds up better because the searcher still needs to choose a business.
For businesses, the response is not to abandon organic search but to adapt to a new visibility channel. If a user's question is answered by an AI snippet that draws on your content, your business is still being seen, even if no click registers in Google Analytics. This is where GEO, or generative engine optimisation, comes in. GEO is the practice of structuring content so that AI engines cite it. Clear answers, quotable facts, consistent entity references and properly marked-up schema all increase the chance that SGE or AI Overviews pull your information into the answer.
How can you track your visibility in AI search?
Standard analytics tools do not show AI citations. Home Instead, a care home client of Victory Digital, saw a 251 per cent increase in organic traffic after a content programme that included GEO-optimised blog posts. That kind of result is visible in the Google Analytics numbers and the Search Console data, but the AI citations themselves need a different tool.
Metrona is Victory Digital's in-house platform that tracks when and how your business appears in AI answers across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews. It shows which queries produce citations, which sources are used and how your visibility changes over time. Without a tool like Metrona, the effect of SGE on your brand is invisible.
What should you do now?
If your business relies on organic traffic from informational searches, the priority is to write content that AI engines can cite directly. That means answering questions clearly in the first paragraph, using structured headings, including quotable statistics and marking up your pages with the right schema. GEO is not a replacement for SEO. It is an addition to it. The combination of ranking well in traditional search and being cited in AI answers gives the best protection against declining click-through rates.
SGE is not a temporary experiment. It is how Google search works now. Businesses that adapt their content strategy will continue to get visibility, even as the format of search results changes around them.
To check how your site appears in AI search, try the free SEO report at https://victory.digital/run-a-seo-report. For a full GEO strategy with Metrona tracking, see the generative AI optimisation service at https://victory.digital/generative-ai-optimisation.
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