After a few months, Google is still testing its new SGE experience, which has gone through a few updates and refinements, including adding links directly in snapshots and decreasing initial visibility, among others.
Even if Sundar Pichai has mentioned how they want to “get it right“, it’s understandable to be nervous about its potential impact on the most valuable scenarios, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday top queries. Let’s go through them to assess it.
Black Friday Deals and Black Friday Deals 2023: An informational snapshot complementing blended organic search results
What’s the experience without SGE?
When searching for “black friday deals” or “black friday deals 2023” we get as top organic search results a mix of the blackfriday.com site, guides from top publications reviewing deals, as well as the black friday landing pages of top retailers.
What’s the experience with SGE?
A SGE snapshot is not initially generated but we’re asked if we want to “get an AI-powered overview for this search”. If we select to generate, then we get an informational-focused snapshot at the top, explaining when it’s Black Friday, while showing a summary list going through the top retailers and their deals.
The list text is not directly clickable, not allowing to go directly to the listed retailers or deals, however, we can “expand” the clickable buttons enabled before or after every section linking to the article where the information has been taken, also listed at the top right of the snapshot in a carousel (some of which are also listed in organic search results).
This is an excellent example of a rather informational snapshot complementing a more blended traditional SERP, that is unlikely to have a major clicks impact on the top ranked pages in traditional search results, since the listed information is not directly clickable, those that want to see deals from a top retailer will click on them in the traditional search results below directly, and those who want to see reviews in guides might end up clicking in the carousel articles at the top, which are already mostly listed also in the traditional search results below too.
Cyber Monday Deals: A commercial PLP like snapshot that can take away clicks from a blended organic search result
What’s the experience without SGE?
When searching for “cyber monday deals” at the top of the organic search results we can see also a blend of major tech publication guides reviewing deals and cyber monday landing pages from major retailers.
What’s the experience with SGE?
However, the experience of a rather blended informational and commercial traditional search result is in this case changed completely by the generated SGE snapshot that is highly commercially and transactionally focused, showing directly a list of product deals from an aggregation of sites, which are directly clicklable, showing the product knowledge panel information and selling retailers details when clicked.
This SGE snapshot could highly impact the search behavior of users searching for cyber monday deals directly satisfying their need with the clickable product listing, and only those looking specifically for expert curation and reviews of deals from certain product types that they can trust, won’t likely continue through this search path.
Black Friday TV Deals and iPad Black Friday Deals: Not so useful, non-directly clickable summarizing listing snapshots
What’s the experience without SGE?
For “black friday TV deals” or “ipad black friday deals” we get mostly guides reviewing deals of these types of products (TVs and iPads), from well known specialized publications.
What’s the experience with SGE?
The SGE snapshots generated in these cases are pretty much a summary, listing the top TVs and iPads ****** deals that can be found in the articles.
These are not directly clickable and because of this, even if they can be useful for users who might want to check these items directly without having to go to the guides, they are pushed to go to the guides, by clicking on them within the carousel at the top, on the buttons across the SGEs displaying them too before/after the text information, which are overlaying with those shown in traditional search results too.
Because of the lack of links in the listed products in the SGE snapshot and its “summary”, highly duplicative nature, it’s unlikely to have a meaningful impact in the articles already listed in traditional organic search results.
Laptop Black Friday Deals and Sneakers Black Friday Deals: Another commercial PLP like snapshot that can take away clicks from a blended organic search result
What’s the experience without SGE?
When searching for “laptop black friday deals” and “sneakers black friday deals” we get a similar type of highly blended traditional search results, with a mix of deals reviews guides for those product types, category pages of major retailers and even a product carousel in the case of laptops.
What’s the experience with SGE?
The SGE snapshots for these are both highly commercially and transactionally focused, recreating a retailer category page listing directly clickable product deals of each type, allowing the user to see the product details and buy them via their product knowledge panels.
The traditionally ranked pages listed in these type of queries deals for non-branded product types can be then highly impacted by these more commercially/transactionally focused snapshots directly listing products, that take the users to the next stage of the buying journey, without having to go through the guides.
There will likely be a share of users that are already more “prepared” to buy that will continue their buying journey through the snapshot, rather than going to the guides for further expert analysis about the products before buying.
Best Buy Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday: Retailers listings will likely lose traffic they used to own of branded queries to competitors via product knowledge panels in SGE
What’s the experience without SGE?
For a share of branded retailers queries such as “best buy black friday” and “amazon cyber monday” we get -as expected- their own brand sites top relevant pages, whether black friday, deals or product pages ranking in top positions, along with guides from other sites reviewing them.
What’s the experience with SGE?
The prominence and “control” of the searched retail brand disappears though in this case with the commercially/transactionally focused SGE that is generated.
A PLP like experience directly listing the products found from those retailers sites is first shown, however, when clicking on any of these products found in “Amazon” or “Best Buy” we get a product knowledge panel specifying their price and conditions not only in those retailers, but also in others that can be considered competitors.
This means that the traffic that previously will likely go directly to the top retailers pages, might now be attracted by their own competitors as they’re also shown through the products knowledge panel via the SGE.
This is another scenario in which branded queries previously “owned” via traditional organic search results by the brand, in this case, for prominent retailers, won’t be so much owned by only them anymore, due to the SGE snapshot recreating a listing, also showcasing their competitors through the product knowledge panel.
Nintendo Switch Black Friday: Products listings will likely lose direct traffic they used to own of branded queries to distributors/retailers via product knowledge panels in SGE
What’s the experience without SGE?
We then have another type of branded queries, in this case of products such as “nintendo switch black friday”, for which traditional search results are prominently showing their own brand site pages along with reviewing guides.
What’s the experience with SGE?
The prominence and “control” of the own brand site in the traditional search results is again lost in this case via the SGE snapshot, showing a PLP listing the product different ****** via clickable results that display a product knowledge panel selling it through different retailers, not only the own product site.
I would say this case is less “critical” than the one of the retailers, since the product will continue to be sold through retailers/distributors even if traffic share is lost to them, which is different than what happens to retailers case above.
Conclusions
As we can see, the impact of SGE can wildly vary depending on the type of search, level of granularity, if the SGE is summarizing or complementary, if it takes the user to the next stage of the buying journey or not, if it’s clickable or not, and if your site is just a distributor/retailer or the own brand.
If you liked this post, take a look at Mike King’s study on SGE in 91K queries and an early analysis I did about SGE visibility and potential impact across some of the most common search intent scenarios.
