What Google’s AI Search Engine Means For Your Brand — And Local SEO

Update: As of May 2024, SGE is now AI Overviews. Here's what marketers need to know about AI Overviews.

Over the past year, we've all witnessed AI models' impact on the way consumers access information. Platforms built on large language models can help write marketing copy, find new recipes, or even generate custom code. And Google itself entered the picture with the launch of Gemini, their most capable AI model to date. Now, Gemini is integrated into the Google search engine, creating a new search generative experience for users.

For marketers, this creates new opportunities to attract and engage with potential customers — but it also presents a whole new set of challenges. In this blog post, we'll discuss how Google Gemini could impact your business, why it relates to local marketing, and what you can do to get ahead of the game.

We asked Google Gemini this question to see what it would say. Here's how Google Gemini defined itself:

"Google Gemini refers to two things:

1. A family of large language models (LLMs): This is the core technical aspect of Gemini. It's a suite of AI models, including Gemini Nano, Pro, and Ultra, developed by Google DeepMind. These models are known for being multimodal, meaning they can understand and process different kinds of information, including text, code, images, audio, and video. Essentially, they can handle a wider range of inputs and outputs than previous models. Google positions Gemini as a competitor to OpenAI's GPT-4.

2. An AI chatbot: This is me! I am a conversational AI chatbot powered by the Gemini family of models. I can help you with various tasks like writing, brainstorming, summarizing information, and generating creative text formats. You can interact with me through text or voice prompts. Previously, I was called Bard, but with the launch of Gemini, my name was changed to reflect this new generation of AI technology."

New large language models appear nearly every week. So, what makes the Gemini-powered search engine so special?

There are three main reasons why this could have a more significant impact on your business:

1. Consumers are accustomed to starting their search journey on Google's traditional search engine. Google currently dominates the search market: 76% of all global searches take place on Google's search engine. Running to Google is already an ingrained habit for consumers, whether that's searching for a product, a service, or looking up a business directly. Even the act of "googling" is synonymous with searching. And Google's new AI-powered search engine presents a new experience for users altogether.

2. Gemini will pull from a variety of data sources and publishers, including your Google Business Profile listings, user suggestions, and even the justifications they find in your reviews. That means if you are not actively managing your business information everywhere, Google could present consumers with inaccurate information about your business — which can lead to a bad customer experience and broken brand trust.

We also asked Google Gemini where it sources its information from, so you don't have to take our word for it. Specifically, we asked, "How do you get your information on companies?" Here's how Gemini responded:

"Google gathers information on companies from a variety of sources to provide the most comprehensive picture possible. Here's a breakdown of the key sources:

• Publicly available information: Google crawls the web extensively, gathering information from business websites, social media profiles, online directories, and news articles. This provides a vast amount of data about companies, including their contact details, descriptions of their products and services, and even customer reviews.

• Licensed data from third parties: Google supplements its information with data licensed from reputable companies specializing in business listings and data aggregation. This ensures a wider coverage and can include details like business hours and financials (depending on the data provider).

• User contributions: Google allows users to contribute factual information (like addresses and phone numbers) and content (like photos and reviews) to business listings. Business owners can also claim and update their profiles through Google My Business, ensuring more accurate and current information.

• Google's interactions: Google's own interactions with a business can also be a source of information. For instance, how often a business appears in search results or how users interact with a business listing on Google Maps can contribute to the overall profile.

By combining information from these sources, Google strives to offer the most up-to-date and informative results on businesses you search for."

3. Google is already expanding its search experience to combine traditional search and conversational chat — much like what Bing did with built-in support for OpenAI's ChatGPT. This has already made a significant impact on how consumers digitally engage and interact with businesses on the search engine: industry estimates say that organic traffic could decline by as much as 20-60%.

So, what should you do to prepare for the new Search Generative Experience (SGE)?

First, companies will need an information management strategy where any information they allow AI to access should be approved, accurate, and traceable to its origin. AI needs to be powered by objective facts that are controlled by your business to avoid hallucinations. If inaccurate or unapproved information makes its way into Gemini's data sources, there's significant risk to your brand.

Here, structured data is key. And for a quick win, consider the impact of listings management.

Listings structure your information, so it's easy for Gemini (and other AI models powering search engines) to find and display in search results. And this impact can be quantified: Yext 2024 research found that, in contrast to those brands limiting their information management to only a few major publishers, brands that appear across >75% of publishers in the Yext network measure a +186% increase in clicks to their websites from Google.*

Powering accurate information about your business is now more important than ever — and your listings do just that.

To take advantage, make sure you're managing your listings by:

1. Keeping your Google Business Profile(s) up-to-date. It's not shocking to hear that Gemini relies on Google Business Profile as a source to collect business data. That allows Google's SGE to quickly pull data from your listings to offer users precise answers. This can include contact information, services offered, real-time operating hours, and even customer reviews.

With Yext's direct integration with Google Business Profiles, you can manage your information and give Gemini the most current and comprehensive information about your company. With Yext Listings, you have the power to control the business information available to Google's AI assistant.

2. Manage as many listings as possible for maximum impact. Google Gemini taps into a wealth of data sources (not just Google Business Profile) to provide users with up-to-date and accurate local business information. Managing your listings on all sites can help ensure that generative AI models only present the most accurate and up-to-date information about your business.

Yext's Publisher Network consists of more than 110 direct API integrations, significantly more than any other listings management solution. This gives businesses the power to truly control their listings across the largest network of third-party publishers.

At Yext, we've verified that there is a correlation between more listings and improved visibility in organic search. Our research* found:

• Location listings with less than 50% of the publisher network synced saw the least amount of Google website traffic. This number served as the baseline for the average percent increases in Google website clicks for the following two ranges.

• Location listings syncing between 50%-75% of the publisher network received a substantial bump in Google website clicks, with an average increase of +95% over the first group.

• Location listings syncing more than 75% of the publisher network saw even better results, with a stunning average increase of +186% in Google website clicks.

3. Refresh your listings consistently. Which article would you have more confidence in: an article that was written in 2015 or one that was written in 2024? You'd likely prefer the article that was written in 2024 because it's more up-to-date, and, therefore, more trustworthy. Well, search engines and AI tools work the same way. They have more trust in data that's recent.

Because of this, we recommend refreshing your data regularly. This could include updating your hours for holidays, adding new photos, posting announcements or special offers to your Google Business Profile page, and acting on suggestions that users make on your listings.

4. Complete your listings profile as much as possible. The more an AI model knows about your business, the more questions they can confidently answer. According to Google, profile completeness is one of the most important strategies that you can implement to help your business rank higher in search results. That's why it's important to fill out as much information as you can — even attributes that you might not consider to be "relevant." These can include accepted payment methods, if your business is women-led, LGBTQ-friendly, and much more.

Yext Listings makes it easy to complete your listings profile by providing you with all the attributes that are available (depending on your type of business). This includes vertical-specific fields if your business aligns with any of the following industries: food, hospitality, financial services, retail, healthcare, and public sector.

As AI search continues to evolve, the way users find and access your information online is going to change. The best way to prepare is to create a digital presence grounded with accurate, relevant information.

As an industry leader, Yext is committed to staying up to date with the latest trends in AI — and helping brands like yours navigate the changing digital landscape.

*As the largest listings vendor, Yext helps thousands of multi-location brands manage their digital presence. This offers Yext the unique ability to conduct a study of this caliber using such a large, diverse data set. To ensure we took an unbiased approach, Yext analyzed more than 620k locations – across all geographies and brand types – that have been live on Listings for at least one year. Reference the full study for more details.