Skip to content
Gallery
emily
Emily Gertenbach
Emily Gertenbach
Digital garden
Portfolio
Speaking & training
More
Share
Explore
Digital garden

icon picker
Google SGE Testing and Notes (Q3 2023)

Emily Gertenbach
Last edited 81 days ago by Emily Gertenbach
Google SGE labs is rolling out to Chrome users. While AI results appear automatically on some NORA (no one right answer) results, you can ask it to generate an AI response on other queries. It may or may not work.
light
TL;DR: Google’s search AI is essentially like a featured snippet on steroids right now. It delivers chunks of text all in one, like multiple featured snippets stitched together. While we’re not yet able to completely pin down the methodology, it appears that Google is selecting content that would have been the featured snippet anyway and/or meets a series of criteria based on content quality, domain authority, content age, and traffic volume.

Exploring how it generates an answer

Test query: “How much does a CMS cost?”
We know that Upwork ranks #1 for this query with an article published in 2021.
Here’s what the AI produced:
⁠
Screenshot 2023-06-01 at 12.19.37 PM.png
⁠
⁠
The AI response pulls directly from three sources, listed as tiles to the right. The tiles are presented not in order of SERP rank, but in the order that the AI had to knit together the lifted chunks of text to make sense.
Upwork = green box
Hubspot = orange box
WPBeginner = blue box
The results are not exactly the same every time. In this second attempt, Hubspot was replaced by Devtechnosys:
⁠
Screenshot 2023-06-01 at 1.05.01 PM.png
⁠
⁠

Exploring how it chooses its sources

The AI is not directly pulling the top three SERP results and creating an answer. Some of the results are at spot 10 or below in SERPs.
⁠
Screenshot 2023-06-01 at 12.26.43 PM.png
⁠
⁠
This indicates that it may be using other factors to select its sources for the AI response.

Type of content

Google appears to eliminate any roundups or Q&A sites from its list of potential sources for an AI response. This rules out Capterra (SERP spot #2), Quora (SERP spot #3), and TrustRadius (SERP spot #6).

Content quality

The quality of the content may also be a factor. By looking at the search query in Clearscope, we see that Google selected content with a high quality rating the first time, but did bring in a lower quality piece in its second response:
⁠
Screenshot 2023-06-01 at 12.33.25 PM.png
⁠
⁠

Domain quality

Domain quality may also be another factor in how Google selects its sources for SGE responses.
Here’s a comparison of how some of the domains in the SERP for this query score in terms of both domain authority (as calculated by Semrush) as well as domain trust and traffic volume (as calculated by SEranking):
Domain
Domain Authority
Domain Trust
Est. monthly traffic
1
Upwork
74
93
5 million
2
WPBeginner
61
93
1.2 million
3
Hubspot
88
91
21.3 million
4
Devtecnosys
34
65
13,700
5
Capterra
68
91
3.4 million
6
Trustradius
61
90
1.9 million
7
Marketpath
26
71
680
8
Streamcreative
30
73
5,400
9
Storyblok
47
88
14,000
There are no rows in this table
⁠

Content Age

Google may also be looking at how old a piece of content is. The publication dates for the top SERP results for this query are as follows:
Domain
Pub. date
1
Upwork
2021
2
WPBeginner
2023 (update)
3
Hubspot
2023
4
Devtecnosys
2019
5
Capterra
unknown
6
Trustradius
unknown
7
Marketpath
dynamic
8
Streamcreative
unknown
9
Storyblok
2021
There are no rows in this table
⁠

Takeaways

If we take out the Q&A and roundup sites and compare the rest, we’re left with this:
Domain
Content quality score
Domain Authority
Domain Trust
Est. monthly traffic
Pub. date
1
Upwork
A-
74
93
5 million
2021
2
WPBeginner
A-
61
93
1.2 million
2023 (update)
3
Hubspot
B+
88
91
21.3 million
2023
4
Devtecnosys
C-
34
65
13,700
2019
5
Marketpath
B-
26
71
680
dynamic
6
Streamcreative
B-
30
73
5,400
unknown
7
Storyblok
C-
47
88
14,000
2021
There are no rows in this table
⁠
It appears that Google is selecting content based on the following factors:
Content quality
Domain trust
Traffic
Publication date
My initial assessment is that it swaps out the “least desirable” of the three sources on subsequent queries in an attempt to give the user a slightly different response. Based on this, I’d expect to see Upwork and WPBeginner continually appearing as a source for the AI answer, with Hubspot, Devtechnosys, and Storyblok cycling through the third spot.
Important: Content quality appears to still be more important than domain authority or monthly traffic.
⁠
Assessed, deemed irrelevant:
[ ] Social sharing
Not yet assessed:
[ ] Core web vitals
[ ] Mobile FCP/LCP
[ ] Ad usage
[ ] Paid traffic volume
Exploring how it generates an answer
Exploring how it chooses its sources
Type of content
Content quality
Domain quality
Content Age
Takeaways
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.