Mr Branding: A New Study Talks About How Google SGE Results are Impacted by Verticals

Friday, May 10, 2024

A New Study Talks About How Google SGE Results are Impacted by Verticals

Ziptie analyzed 500k queries to find out which patterns trigger SGE results. Google’s search generative experience (SGE) is not available for all user queries and it has different effects on search traffic acquisition, depending on the vertical on which your business operates. The result of the analysis showed that most of the verticals seem to be in 80-90% range with beauty vertical at top with 94% query coverage and financial vertical with 47% SGE coverage.

Health and Finance had the lowest Google SGE, but even with being the lowest, health had 80% query coverage. Google had started the guidelines named Your Money, Your Life to hold websites to a higher standard. These two categories belong to YMYL and Google is using AI to cover YMYL queries. Finance and Investing vertical were only 22% covered by Google in July 2023, but now they are covered 47% as of April 2024. Predictions by Search Engine Journal say that Google will add more SGE results with more data which will bring high quality results.

Users who have been using Google SGE for a while will see a ‘Generate’ button soon rather than Google showing SGE results by default. After comparing default Google SGE results and results from the generate button, it was found that each result ratio is different for each vertical. The auto-generated results don’t want any action from the user's end. The auto-generated results from Google SGE can also put traditional SERPs down. In the health vertical, 68% queries are from Google SGE while only 9% show a generate button. On the other hand, verticals like entertainment and hotels, only 4% to 6% are auto-generated results while 77% of the queries show a generate button.

To estimate Google SGE’s impact on your brand, you need to prioritize Google’s SGE data. Gather the queries that cover 80-90% of your search volume and divide queries that come from auto-generated Google SGE and the ones that come from manual Google SGE. Many SEO teams all around the world want to add Google SGE optimization to their search results. After dividing the queries, optimize the queries into auto-generated buckets and track Google SGE buckets. Once you know the SGE effect on your brand, look into sources.

Brands can only get organic traffic from Google SGE when brands click on a source of AI generated content. According to the vertical you are in, 40% to 50% can make a huge difference. Results that show less sources have higher chances of generating more traffic because of higher click through rate. You have to track the number of sources for your Google SGE queries. Prioritize your SGE optimization for queries which have the least number of sources. Google SGE is working on a new algorithm right now so your rankings will not turn to Google SGE one-to-one.