Our Review of Google’s SGE (So Far)
Editor’s Note: As things change with SGE, we will update this article.
A few weeks ago, we got our hands on some cool new tools from Google: Bard and SGE. Limited access has been provided to users across the country for the time being, but these tools will be available to everyone eventually.
Right now, you can try to get access by signing up with Google Labs, but there’s no guarantee that will work. And no, we’re not special. We signed up like everyone else.
Bard: Your Personal AI Assistant
If you’re unfamiliar with these resources, Bard is Google’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Basically, it’s a chatbot that answers questions and can carry on a conversation. It’s also great for research or writing up some notes, summarizing complex material, and just playing around.
In the example above, you can see that Bard still has some kinks to iron out.
SGE Might Be the Future of Search
SGE stands for Search Generative Experience. This project was announced at Google I/O, the search giant’s annual developer conference where it shows off updates and digital products. SGE was promoted as an alternative to Microsoft Bing’s inclusion of ChatGPT into its search experience.
Did Google Drop the Ball?
Google seemed to be caught off-guard by the announcement of Microsoft's team-up with OpenAI, although it shouldn’t be a surprise given that Microsoft has invested $13 billion into the company.
Ever since the OpenAI-Microsoft-Bing-three-way-tag-team-SEARCHOMANIA XXVII (yeah brother!) Google seems to be on the defensive.
This is a bit odd for the company given that Google has dominated search and tech trends for nearly two decades now. In either case, Google looked to be scrambling to introduce its own large language model (LLM) search tool.
What Google Showed at I/O
During Google I/O, the company debuted SGE, and it looked kinda’ cool.
The idea behind it is that instead of searching and merely getting links to follow, the new search experience would provide a robust set of results that you could also ask follow-up questions about.
Credit: Google I/O
The idea behind follow-ups is that you would be able to continue a search through a logical line of thinking. In terms of the added sources that would show up in search results, the thinking here is that search results would include answers from across the web including social media, Q&A sites, traditional websites, and other sources.
We like this idea because it gives small players a chance to compete with the big boys. Until now, the world of content marketing and SEO has been largely driven by how much money a brand can spend on content development and link building. More $$$=more people=more content published on high-quality sites.
With SGE, Google seems to be signaling that these efforts alone won’t be enough. Instead, content development, link building, and entity authority are going to be the hot topics moving forward.
Entities are things around the web that reference other things. Basically, they are the data that make up the entity of a person, topic, company, product, or other “things” on the web. Google then connects all of this together to understand all of the “things” or sources of data about an entity.
For instance, if your brand gets mentioned in a Quora response, that’s an entity, and that reference signals to Google that your brand is worth talking about, and moreover, what people are saying about your brand. These signals help to tie your brand to topics which can help in ranking when content is created based on search intent (boring stuff, but we love it!)
What We've Experienced During Our Testing
So, before getting into our experience with SGE, we’ll take this moment to remind you that these tools aren’t finished or released. They are being updated every single day, so even during our testing, things have changed from hour to hour.
With that out of the way...
Oh, SGE. You hold such promise, and yet we’re still so far from where we need to be.
We want to like SGE. We really do, and based on what Google showed at I/O 2023, it looks like it has so much potential.
Unfortunately, we’re not there yet. We’re getting there, but we’re not there. And it’s hard to make that statement because, again, SGE has changed so much just in the short time we’ve been testing it.
It’s been tough to nail down a definitive experience with the product because it keeps changing. And much of this change has been for the better, so we’ll give Google kudos on that.
The product felt rushed out at first, but Google’s team has been quick to make fixes and balancing adjustments that have made the experience better each day. We’re still not where we want to be, but we’re getting there.
The Issues
In a nutshell, one of the biggest issues with SGE is that it seems to lack purpose. Why? Because it just adds unnecessary steps in a lot of ways. With traditional search, we get our blue links and then choose what looks like the most relevant path to follow.
Google then introduced Featured Snippets. These are clickless answers to search queries and appear at the top of search results. They answer basic questions and provide facts based on consensus. Not bad if you’re looking for info but not really helpful for answers to questions like, “What’s the best Italian restaurant in Charlotte?”
With SGE, much of what we’ve seen copies the featured snippet (Eidt: It’s gotten a bit better about this in the last week.) So, what gets displayed is the generative result, but then the featured snippet with the same info is shown below, then the links. Another big issue here is that there are no links included with the generative result.
Clickbait Without the Click
We’ve heard some refer to this as “clickbait without the click”, and that’s a pretty good description of some of the results we’ve seen. For example, if you search for local news, SGE will pop up a list of news headlines for the area you’ve searched in. But there are no links to learn more! Why?
It just gives a summary of the headlines and then provides a few vague image squares to the side that get cut off due to space limitations. The titles included with these images don’t always match the headlines, so you don’t know what to click on. The headlines have no links. It’s literally just text sayin, “Man bites dog in Charlotte.”
There’s no way to easily learn more, but there’s also no way to verify the credibility of the headlines if you can’t efficiently get to the story. In an age where mis/disinformation is a bigger problem than ever on the web, one would think this would be sorted out from the jump off. I don’t want to spend time clicking aimlessly, hoping that the thing I click gets me to the story that corresponds with the text.
Best Of?
Oh, and backing up for a second – SGE does show “best of” results for commerce queries, which is weird. But, once again, there are no links to click in the list of results. Once again, there are links contained in images off to the side, but they don’t tell you which link goes with which piece of text.
So, if you search for “best lawyers in Charlotte”, you get a list of “some of the best” lawyers in Charlotte, but no links to click on to visit each one. (Edit: Our result now shows “highly-rated” instead of “best.”) Also, this is kind of weird because lawyers aren’t allowed to market themselves as “the best” or “experts.” CCM delivers marketing for law firms in Charlotte, and we know a thing or two about these restrictions. Google obviously isn’t the lawyer making such a claim, but it raises questions for SEO gray areas in the future.
Plagiarism
Another glaring issue we’ve seen is outright plagiarism. The way this generative tech works is through large-language models (LLMs) that are trained on huge volumes of data.
They predict what to say next based on what they’ve seen in the same context during training. There’s bound to be some plagiarism because the technology doesn’t “think” or “know” anything. It’s a processor at the end of the day.
Sadly, it’s lifting entire paragraphs from the web. This, we’ve predicted, was going to be a problem from day one. We’ve written about this before and even commented on the potential for lawsuits.
Getty has already begun pursuing legal action against the makers of Stable Diffusion due to copyright infringement, but what we’re seeing with SGE is outright copying.
At least with Stable Diffusion, the argument can be made that images are created “based” on the originals. Here, Google is straight up copying what someone else wrote without giving credit. Someone else’s content is represented as Google’s answer.
The issue this raises for content creators is what safeguards will be put in place to stop this from happening.
If Google is giving the answer, much like in Featured Snippets, there’s no reason to visit a website. At least with Featured Snippets, you can clearly see the link to click to check the answer for yourself.
Featured Snippets and clickless answers have also been a thorn in the side of SEOs for a while now, but this opens a whole new set of issues. If there’s no reason to visit a website, what’s the point of having a website?
But then the problem becomes that LLMs will have no data to train on, so they die off or completely fabricate answers or have to rely on outdated data. Either that or they start talking to each other and it’s once again bots writing for bots talking to bots.
Answers We’d Rather Click For
In keeping with the theme of “kinda’ useless,” another issue is that SGE’s answers are often things we’d rather click through to get details. For instance, we searched for “How do you change a spark plug on a 1995 Honda Accord?” The answer was an eight-step sequence that amounted to “take out the old spark plug, put in the new one.”
For this query, we wanted to know HOW to change the spark plug on that particular model. Obviously, these two steps are vital, but we already know this. It’s self-evident. We’re looking for something deeper which is why we included the year, make, and model of the car. For this query, we want the steps, but we wouldn’t be searching if it was as easy as “take out, put in.” This is kind of pointless.
SGE Stops Generating Randomly
SGE also stops generating responses randomly. We don’t know if this is because there’s nothing left to say or if there’s a bug or a limit or what, but it’s kind of weird and slightly annoying. It can happen for random queries, and so far, no real rhyme or reason; however, we have noticed this happens more often when getting specific about things.
It makes us wonder if this isn’t once again an issue with Featured Snippets. The info is the info is the info. We get that, and we don’t want SGE making stuff up just to fill space; however, when we’re drilling down and know more info exists, but then we’re met with a blank, it’s a bit frustrating.
Citing Non-Authoritative Sources
One potentially positive thing that we’ve noticed during testing is that generative answers that receive citations are often from unknown sources. What we mean by that is that sites are being highlighted that are random sites with information, not just the big players on the web.
Look, we like Forbes just as much as anyone else, but Google treats Forbes like Wikipedia now. Almost every basic search we do for information these days includes a Forbes article as a result.
The problem for small business owners has always been competing against the big guys who have the money and resources to spend on content marketing and SEO. Even if you create stellar content that provides a lot of value in your industry and for your customers, you may find your business facing an uphill battle depending on your niche and the competition.
With SGE, it’s looking like, at least for now, Google is allowing other sources to shine through. We’ve seen a lot of websites cited that aren’t your typical news sites, magazines, or other major players on the web. This can be a good thing for small and medium-sized businesses in the Charlotte Metro looking to get found.
Expanded View for Visual Search
One thing that we’re not sure if we’re totally hot about just yet is the option for expanded visual search. This works by giving you the option to expand the results of a search onto a visual spread that combines images from the pages of results along with answers to queries.
In this example, the query is “Learning ukulele vs guitar.” The result shows a brief answer with a few extra details. Next to this, you can see some sites to visit for more info.
If you expand these results, you can see a breakout that shows a variety of details and their associated sources (supposedly. We didn’t click through all of them to verify this.)
While this is neat, we’re not sure how well this will catch on. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
The nice thing about this is, however, that it at least shows you a breakdown of which pieces of a result came from which sources. So, if you’re following a multi-step instruction, you can expand the result and see that steps six and seven came from a particular website. This gives you the chance to explore more on your own.
Perspectives Isn’t a Thing for Us Yet
Perhaps the most exciting and enticing part of SGE is Perspectives. This is a feature that’s been touted as a way to gain visibility outside of traditional search. Google has shown off Perspectives as a collection of sources from around the web that gets displayed when someone asks a question. It looks like it will be an optional feature, and for now, we haven’t had access to it.
The idea behind Perspectives is that social sites like Quora, City Data, Reddit, and others will generate results. What this means is that everywhere you are on the web has the potential to show up in search (Remember when we talked about entities earlier?) This can be a great opportunity for you because it opens up new avenues to get found by simply engaging your community on the web.
What we’ve been encouraging our clients to do is get more active on these types of sites. If you have an account, make sure the name matches your business’ name or your real name.
This can be used to verify your identity when it comes to building credibility among entities with Google and with your customers on the web. We believe these types of citations are going to play a big part in search within the coming years, so now is a good time to start showcasing your expertise by getting these signals flowing early.
We’re Reserving Judgment
While we want to say that SGE is the future, we can’t. Not yet, at least. It holds potential, and maybe that potential has not lived up to the promise, but maybe it will.
Time will tell. Until then, we’re going to keep testing and tracking improvements and changes so that we can continue to provide our clients with the best content marketing in Charlotte and around the world.
To learn more about how we can help your business get more customers in the door using SEO and content marketing in Charlotte and the surrounding area, contact Charlotte Content Marketing today using the form below!
