Of course, there is some impatience and concern about what SGE will finally become, to start taking actions. For now, I think the best strategy is SEOBranding and product enhancements.

I'm not as immediately worried about it for my sector as I work with a lot of local businesses. Right now for my sector (law) there is a lot of replication in the more lower-funnel SGE results. The same page shows up like 5 times throughout the entire generated result. Google saying the same thing in different ways (i.e. "here are the best lawyers near you" "here are top-rated lawyer near you". You can tell Google is still testing a lot and they're delaying the roll out so I feel a lapse in confidence with it too. I just wonder what the user data is telling them so far. As a user there have been many times where I've stopped SGE from populating cause it was taking too long. So user interaction upon a full roll out will also determine what Google does with it. I also wonder what the response will be from a paid search end. If Google gets pushback on that end then I see SGE getting low visibility.

Depending on your sector, it's useful to do some work to implement/test things for SGE but there's still too much guesswork on how/the breadth of it's implementation at this stage. But I could see why e-commerce sites or publishers that write listicles for example would be concerned or more proactive.

A little bit of worry I think is normal and I feel it. But on the whole, I look forward to riding the wave of whatever SGE becomes. Technology can't and won't be held back, and if it's an improved experience for users - which I think it will be - then it's all to the good. We, as organic search marketers, will have to adapt and evolve with it. Our day-to-day responsibilities, tactics, and overall strategies may become quite different, but isn't that true every decade? SEO in 2024 is not what it was in 2014 or 2004 either, right? I think the best thing we can all do is keep learning as much about how to use this technology as possible and then incorporating what we learn to help us get the best SEO results possible. Aleyda gave a great webinar in conjunction with Moz the other day on how to incorporate LLM / AI into our current daily SEO workflows and practices. I think this is the way.

Once SGE features go live there will be much less use for actual websites.

Why? Google will display most of your content right on the Google site/app.

Or you get a hard to reach source links to appease the regulators.

One way or the other the traffic from AI Google will be negligble. Expect a 1% CTR for SGE results.

Zero click searches will be the new normal, just like with [not provided] and keywords in GA.

1. It's about time to embrace a holistic online presense appraoch.

2. Do more than basic technical SEO for a "Web site".

3. Optimize for more than just "traffic" to that "Web site".

Content and social SEO for organic reach across properties and third party sites will be more important.

So if your business depends just on building/optimizing websites but does nothing for content, social and branding then you have a problem.

Just kidding LOL.

I know I'm a weirdo - but I'm not worried about SGE. I think SGE as it is now is not what SGE in a year from now is. I don't see the novelty of a bot giving me a few lines to answer a question. BIng's lack of market share increase aligns with that notion. Also, to me, this incarnation of SGE is a response to Bing getting ahead of Google initially. I have no fear or faith in something built to catch up to a rival as inherently it's not built to target user satisfaction.

I think SGE will evetually turn into what Google demoed with Gemini offering custom layouts to align with the needs of specific user input. That, to me, is very novel. It also aligns with a need Google already sees: A more natural and immersive way to explore results (hence you see things like circle to search now being announced).

If that does happen - it means Google will be effective at getting the user to far more targeted pieces of content - which means, perhaps - that those top of the funnel head term may not pay off in the same way - or with the same types of content. (You already see Google trying to address that with the top of the SERP bubble filters).

But this, IMHO, is not so much a "search" phenomena - but rather where content on the web is heading as a whole.

I'm actually struggling to see how it can be effectively made into a truly production ready feature that effectively adds value for the user. It's clearly a rushed feature made to satisfy the shareholders... and I havent seen visibile improvements in the last few months.

So yeah, I'm totally not worried and not planning to do anything at the moment.

Still waiting to see how it plays out, what I've seen to date didn't impress me much.

If we look at this purely from a product perspective, changes across the Google platform are going to cause significant disruption. I'd suggest that Google will try to favor large brands in the SERPs to keep the experience as seamless as possible for users - once users can't use Google to navigate, they start to complain about the quality. In reality there will be advantages to the smaller operators and affiliates who can move quickly - and this will push increased spending on paid from the established brands to meet targets, which in turn will drive down organic results further. So overall, I expect it to be negative to our clients, at least within the first 6 months of launch.

I think SGE is going to provide great opportunities for SEO. Our primary goal is to maximize visibility in search engines. This is another piece of real estate for us to target.

Businesses and other website owners will want to be visibile in SGE, Bing Chat, ChatGPT, etc. They will be looking for help with achieving that. It's a wide open opportunity for SEOs who adapt.