Marketing strategies need to be reinvented with the arrival of a Google tool

It was recently that Google announced the AI Overview, its own artificial intelligence tool. According to the company, the big change will be the personalization of the responses to the surveys. That is, when the search engine receives a query, it will not provide links to texts, videos, social networks or maps — it will give a direct response. The goal here is to make life easier for the user, who will not have to curate the search results to find what they need; Google itself will do so and deliver the best answer.

In practice, the change can make users visit fewer pages, and as a consequence, they interact less with websites and other digital environments created by other companies. And that can completely change the marketing and sales strategy of several of them.

“Let's give an example: you just moved in and are looking for a new gym to train. You go to Google search engine and type ‘10 best gym options in [complete with your neighborhood] and close to my house’. Instead of several links automatically generated and ranked from keywords, or a confused map with several points marked, you will receive a complete and organized list – in an order defined by AI Overview”, predicts Thaís Faccin, partner of Jahe Marketing.

The tool is already integrated with the Google search engine in the United States and, by the end of 2024, it will reach billions of people worldwide.

“ In terms of marketing, this changes the playing field, and will put companies in a new race for attention and audience. This is because the company's role on the web, as a distributor and monetization of attention, is enormous. Any change in your search engine has consequences for brand strategies”, says the expert.

“Using the search tool has become as everyday and natural as breathing”, says also partner Satye Inatomi. She points out that Google is responsible for more than 90% of web searches around the world – 99% in Brazil. More than 50% of Google searches result in clicks on one of the first three results. And it holds more than 70% of the paid research market worldwide.

But for entrepreneurs and companies, the challenge is even greater. How to produce content that is found on the internet and used in the answers of AI Overview? What will happen to this structure every time that AI Overview should drastically reduce click rates, screen scrolling, searches done on multiple sources? Does this mean that advertisements will be less viewed, less clicked?

“It will be necessary to follow the development and use of the new tool to understand how the pieces of this puzzle will fall back into place. However, it is worth investing in some elements that, as far as we know, are part of the trail that the IAS travel to deliver a survey”, says Inatomi.

One of them is content that can answer common questions and are therefore included in the snippets – Blocks of information that appear at the top of the search page and are often used by IAS.

They are designed to provide direct and concise answers to users' questions, without the need to click on a link to get the information. According to Google itself, when the platform recognizes a question at the time of research, its programming detects pages that answer the question, displaying this content as the main result within these blocks.

“Parelically, it is worth creating FAQ sections (the FAQs) with quick answers. This also increases the chance that your material will be ‘fished’ by an artificial intelligence platform. High-Authority Sites are more likely to be cited by AI systems.”

Until then, the certainty is that the competition between brands and the dispute for the public's attention will be increasingly staunch. It takes creativity, knowing how to adapt to market changes and elaborating the best strategies to leverage your business.