E378: How to show up in Google’s new AI Overviews.
In this episode you’ll get: - All the forms and features of Google’s AI Overviews. - Straightforward methods to be included in AI Overviews. - Crazy out-of-the-box methods people are using.
00:00 Introduction to Google's AI Overviews 00:33 AI Overviews’ Controversial Rollout 01:07 Optimizing for AI Overviews 03:08 The Role of Social Media in AI Training 03:42 Social Media Brand Ambassadors 05:37 Recap 06:18 Personal Insights
#seo #aioverviews #digitalmarketing #contentmarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
Google is changing and I am here to help you through it. On today's episode of the podcast, we're gonna be talking about AI overviews, how to optimize for AI overviews. AI overviews are a new feature from Google. Sometimes these affect more results. Sometimes they affect less results. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't, but you probably have seen them. Google is changing incorporating so much generative AI into the results. And I'm going to share how to optimize for generative AI in the Google search results. This is a very controversial feature. When it was first rolled out, it was giving terrible results. It was all over Twitter, all over X, all over the news about how bad its results were. And Google rolled it back. Google took it back. Said we're sorry. So bad, didn't actually say we're sorry. Actually they did, they issued a statement. I remember they issued a statement, yeah. And so they rolled it back, they put it in, they rolled it back again. So it's here, then it's not, then it is, and it's not. But look, we want to be on the cutting edge of SEO, on the cutting edge of digital marketing. And so it's important to know how to optimize for AI overviews, and that's what I'm sharing. These informational AI overviews, they come in different formats. You'll see them in big paragraphs. You'll see them in breakouts, in bullet points, with citations, in videos, product recommendations, local SEO, and a lot of information with local. They come in lots of different formats, just like Google's rich answers, Google's featured snippets, which were talked about on yesterday's episode of the podcast, how to optimize for featured snippets. That's what yesterday's episode was about. And this one is about how to optimize for AI overviews. A lot of it is similar. I'm going to talk about the three ways that everybody knows. And then I'm going to share a way that not a lot of people talk about, not a lot of people really know. More of a, more of a grayer way. More of a grayer way. So how do you optimize for these AI overviews? You do it with an authoritative tone of voice. You want to sound very authoritative. You're not questioning yourself. The writing doesn't sound hesitant. It's direct, it's straightforward, it's confident. Kind of like me when I speak. You want to sound like you really know what you're talking about. Here's the thing. These services doing generative AI, OpenAI, Google, anthropic, they want to recommend the best stuff. Something that they will look for is authority of voice. It's confidence signals that the author knows what he or she is talking about. That's very positive for these generative AI providers. So write in an authoritative way. It helps if you include lots of backup information, include statistics, include quotations, site your sources. These are actually normal tenants of SEO writing and they're also very important to generative AI. Sound authoritative, give statistics, give quotes. Lots of background info and supporting info. Now here's where it starts to get a little bit wild. These generative AI providers, they are heavily relying not just on websites, not just on your websites and your friend's website and your boss's website, your company's website. They're relying on social media platforms, Reddit, Quora, even Instagram or TikTok or YouTube shorts where videos have rich descriptions for them. I've talked about that a lot on this show. Even the descriptions for videos are useful. I want to share something crazy that brands are doing, especially on Reddit. This is crazy that people are doing this. Brands are hiring an army of brand ambassadors. If you don't see me, I am using air quotes to say brand ambassadors because really, these are people in low GDP per capita places. They are trained on what the brand does. So I said AI is being trained on social media platforms. These brand ambassadors in these low GDP per capita places are trained on what the brand does, what it specializes in, keywords that are important to the brand use cases that are important to the brand. These people go on Reddit and Quora. All these places, posting with a US VPN or no VPN or VPNs in other places, a mix of IP addresses, looking as genuine as they can. And they put lots of comments, lots of main posts about the brand, what it does, why the brand is the best brand for so-and-so. All its use cases in the comments stand alone post for it. And this gives lots of signals to AI, what this brand does, what it can be recommended for, and why it is trusted, notable, and worth recommending. And literally, these people are available on Fiverr. It's crazy out there. Brand ambassador used to mean like you go to conferences, you're good looking, you're well-spoken, you go to conferences, you talk about the brand, you impress people with the brand. Now you go on Reddit, I mean, that's still done. But people are going on Reddit. They're going on Quora. They're writing video descriptions. So it's crazy out there. That's how people are optimizing for AI overviews. Like I said, there are some caveats with AI overviews because it's still a new feature. AI overviews are constantly being rolled back, coming back in, rolled back, come back in. They have a very limited appearance. Features are changing non-stop and it is volatile, but you wanna stay on the cutting edge of SEO and this is what you gotta know. So here's the recap. There's all these different formats for AI overviews, paragraphs, breakouts, bullet points, citations, videos, product recommendations, local information, how to optimize. You wanna sound authoritative right in an authoritative way, sound confident. Give statistics, give quotes, give lots of background and supporting information. And the craziest brands are getting brand ambassadors to post non-stop and comments and standalone posts or even video descriptions. Talking about all the different use cases of a brand and why the brand is worth being recommended. Lots of copy being generated around the brand. And that's all you gotta know about AI overviews from Google. This is episode 378 of my daily digital marketing podcast. Ooh, had fun with this one, I really did. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for listening. Hope you learned some valuable stuff on this episode. Honestly, I think it's some valuable information for any marketing niche, sound authoritative and give evidence. Where did I get a lot of this from? I'll give you my sources. I learned it personally because I see my own projects being recommended by chat GPT and AI overviews. I learned it from meeting people, hearing stories that they are telling me. I learned it from reading different articles talking about this. I learned it from scouring X, seeing what other people are reporting. And like I said, I learned it from doing it myself. For many years. And when chat GPT came about, it was very quickly recommending myself. And I knew exactly why. At the end of the day, you wanna have copy around your brand on a wide range of websites, social media platforms, your own sites, directories. You wanna have it in lots of different places. You want Google, you want other generative AI providers to know exactly what your brand is providing. And this makes it a lot easier for generative AI to recommend yourself. All right, that's all for this episode. I will talk to you again tomorrow.
