Ever since the Ray Google AI Overviews update, Google scaled back showing AI Overviews in Google Search for some YMYL categories, especially in the health space. But now we are seeing more and more AI Overviews showing up for health-related queries since the weekend.
There has not been an official study done yet, but some SEOs are noticing it, so I tried it out, and I am seeing a boatload of AI Overviews showing up in Google Search. I should note that they do not show up for some of the more serious types of queries, around heart attacks, cancers and so on.
Adam Riemer posted over the weekend on X "Ai overviews are answering medical and YMYL queries again. Wasn’t seeing them for a while, now back on a lot of queries." But now he said the results have been pretty solid, he said, "The difference this time from before is that I’m seeing what look like better sources, haven’t actually checked." Lily Ray added, "Yep - the sourcing appears to be improving in AIO. Plus the ability for high quality sites to actually receive traffic from AIO, as opposed to spammy/low quality sites that don’t otherwise rank."
Plus Lily just posted some data from Ziptie:
I'm tracking @Healthline in AI Overviews as a barometer for Google citing authoritative sources for health queries. This is the % rate of AIO showing Healthline in citations compared to last week - big jump:
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 25, 2024
(Tool = Ziptie) pic.twitter.com/7BM1QFTnUP
You can use this too - for 1,000 health queries... the overlap between AIO citations and top ranking domains is pretty high now pic.twitter.com/ECNbcgmpOl
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 25, 2024
This too pic.twitter.com/GvyIMg4h8N
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) June 25, 2024
Here are those posts:
Ai overviews are answering medical and YMYL queries again. Wasn’t seeing them for a while, now back on a lot of queries.
— Adam Riemer (@rollerblader) June 23, 2024
The difference this time from before is that I’m seeing what look like better sources, haven’t actually checked.#SEO #HeyGoogle #SEOchat pic.twitter.com/o4AzV6Ns0l
I pulled a ton of examples and notice how some of the more serious health queries do not show AI Overviews:
Now these do not:
But then we got this:
Forum discussion at X.
