SGE — Google's AI comes to search results
Google's Search Generative Experience is now in open testing. It puts an AI-written summary at the top of many results pages. Here is what that means for SEO, traffic, and how you should think about content.
Tom BarberGoogle's Search Generative Experience — SGE for short — has moved from invite-only to open testing in the US, and is rolling out to UK testers now. If you opt in, the top of many results pages now shows an AI-generated answer, drawn from web content, with links to the sources alongside. It is the biggest visual change to Google search in twenty years.
What SGE actually looks like
For an informational query — "what is core web vitals", "how do I migrate from ua to ga4" — SGE writes a three- or four-paragraph summary at the top of the page. Beside the summary it shows three or four "carousel" cards linking to the sources it used. Below that, the familiar ten blue links carry on as before.
For a transactional query — "buy running shoes", "find a plumber in sheffield" — SGE is much more restrained. Sometimes it does not appear at all. Google seems to be deliberately conservative about applying it to commercial intent.
What this changes for traffic
The honest answer is: nobody yet knows. Click-through-rate data from the test cohort is not public. Early publisher experiments suggest informational queries are losing some clicks to the AI summary, but the carousel cards beside the summary appear to drive a meaningful share of the remaining traffic. The pages most affected are likely those that ranked in positions four through ten — the ones that previously got the long tail of clicks and now have to compete for inclusion in the AI's sources.
What you can do about it
- Write content that is genuinely the best answer to a specific question. SGE seems to source from pages that lead with a clear, self-contained answer.
- Use clear structure: question-shaped H2 headings, direct lead-in paragraphs under each one, lists where they fit. The same things that help featured snippets help SGE sourcing.
- Lean into the things AI cannot do: original opinion, named experience, specific case studies, measurable outcomes. A summary cannot replace these — it can only point to them.
- Keep an eye on Search Console. Google has not yet told publishers when traffic comes from an SGE source, but they have said it will eventually.
This will not be the last shape of AI in search. But it is the first one with broad public exposure, and it is worth getting ahead of rather than waiting to react.