SGE SEO | The New Front Page of Google and Why You’re Not On It

With SGE SEO, your business has another way to appear in Google search results. Not your typical search result. Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) has transformed the results page into a real-time AI assistant that offers advice right at the top of its website.  

Now, users are met with an instant snapshot that directly answers their query. This summary pulls data from multiple web pages, distilling the most relevant insights into a structured format that often includes quick explanations, comparisons, and suggested next steps. 

The AI-generated snapshot appears at the very top of the page, above both ads and organic results. It changes how people consume information and dramatically reduces the visibility of traditional rankings. Even if your content ranks first, it might now sit hundreds of pixels below the fold (the part of the screen users see before they start scrolling), making it hard to see and unlikely to be clicked. 

If your content isn’t structured or signalled in a way that helps Google’s AI cite it, your site will slowly become invisible, even if your insights are solid. To stay visible in this new environment, the priority shifts from chasing positions to designing content that AI selects and displays. That requires understanding how the AI chooses what to show. 

Why Traditional Rankings Are Losing Power 

Organic rankings used to be the gold standard. Rank in the top three, and you’d capture the lion’s share of clicks. However, that playbook no longer holds up, because users are no longer seeing those links first. 

With SGE’s AI Overview sitting at the very top, even the best-performing content is pushed down the page. In some cases, the AI snapshot occupies hundreds of thousands of pixels on your screen. 

That’s enough to bury the first organic result well below the fold, where users are far less likely to scroll. 

This is what mobile searches look like with and without the AI Overview: 

On desktop, organic results also often do not appear above the fold:

That’s a 729-pixel gap caused by the AI module. With traditional results, users see your content immediately. With SGE, they often don’t see it at all unless they intentionally scroll. 

Some publishers are reporting that traffic may drop between 20 and 60 percent on content now replaced by AI answers. Click-through rates are dropping even for top-ranking pages, not because the content is worse, but because it’s harder to reach. The AI response is working… It satisfies the search intent before a single search result link is clicked. 

This shift challenges every assumption about how SEO success is measured. Rankings still matter, but visibility has been decoupled from position. If your content isn’t part of the AI summary, you’re competing in a race the user never sees. 

How is SGE different from SEO? 

When talking about SGE, most people focus on the AI summary at the top of the page, but what sits beside it is just as powerful. In many SGE results, you’ll find a panel that lists the sources the AI pulled from. These are the suggested links users are shown if they want to “dig deeper.” 

Mindesigns is currently the top-cited source for one of these panels, appearing in Google’s AI Overview for the query “what is a feature article.” This keyword is a high-intent search for marketing professionals and business owners seeking to increase their writing output. Being cited directly by Google’s AI in this context provides us with front-row visibility into the exact audience we serve, without relying on traditional rankings. 

This is no small detail. In traditional search, the best you could hope for was to land in position one. Now, if your page is cited by the AI, you skip the scroll entirely. Your link is placed directly beside the generated answer, right at the top of the page. In some cases, like with our article above, that first suggestion is the only website content users can see in full above the fold. It becomes the sole organic entry point before users decide whether to keep reading or leave satisfied. 

It’s the new premium spot in search. 

But here’s the catch. SGE does not follow the same rules that traditional ranking algorithms do. Many of the sites featured in this sidebar do not rank on page one at all. And the number of sources cited is limited. You’re no longer competing for ten blue links. You’re competing for three, sometimes even just one. 

This raises the stakes and changes the criteria. 

To get cited, your content must help the AI form its answer. That means your page needs to provide a clear, trustworthy, and structured explanation of the topic. It needs to match user intent, not only the keyword. And it has to feel safe to reference, complete, balanced, and free from clickbait or exaggerated claims. 

In short, your content needs to be AI-usable. 

This is where organic content becomes more powerful than ever before. If you’re one of the few sources the AI trusts enough to cite, you become part of the answer. And in an SGE-driven world, that’s the most valuable visibility you can earn. 

How Google’s SGE SEO Chooses the Information it Uses  

Mindesigns’ client Eakins Finance offers home loan solutions, and we help manage their blog. One of their key topics is building management fees, a recurring search query among property buyers. While competitors were fighting for traditional rankings, we helped Eakins gain a different kind of exposure: a citation directly in the AI Overview sidebar. 

That meant we were able to get our client’s content to show  amongst the very top referrals the AI used for its overview. Offering Eakins more exposure and potential traffic from Google. 

So, what made it work? Here’s the approach we used: 

1. We led with context, not just keywords
   Instead of writing a narrow article titled “What is a Building Management Fee?”, we positioned it as a fee breakdown for buyers, covering multiple costs including strata, legal, and council fees. This broader framing helped match the AI’s intent to answer the entire question instead of just one slice of it. 
2. We matched the format to an AI-friendly structure
   The article was broken into short, clearly labelled sections. Each answer was written as a one-to-two sentence explanation that the AI could easily extract. We added a summary at the top, pros and cons, tables, and included clean headings throughout the page. 
3. We applied structured data and natural language
   A table of contents and article schema made the content machine-readable, but it still read like a human conversation. Each section was based on practical queries like “How are building management fees calculated?” and “Are these fees included in loan approvals?” 
4. We focused on trust and completeness
   The article included sourced definitions, government links, and real-world examples. There were no exaggerated claims or fluffy filler. Just clear, credible information that the AI could safely cite.  
5. We designed for intent, not volume
   The article won on usefulness. By answering the surrounding questions and offering full context, it became a source that the AI could rely on. That’s why it appeared in the sidebar, even though competitors with more backlinks and content volume did not. 

Eakins is now gaining top visibility for property-related queries because their content was written to serve both the user and the AI.  

SGE SEO Framework for getting better results 

The results we achieved with Eakins were not a one-off win. They were the result of a system designed to speak both to people and to AI. The article succeeded because it’s helpful and aligned with how SGE understands relevance, structure, and trust. 

The natural question is: how do you scale this? 

At Mindesigns, we turn one-time results into repeatable strategy. Below is the framework we use to help enterprise teams earn AI citations, maintain brand presence at the top of search, and stay future-proof as SGE evolves. 

Write for interpretation, not just ranking 

Knowing that AI parses instead of skimming, we make sure that every page is built in a way the model can interpret accurately. We focus on clarity over cleverness, building layouts that feel intuitive to readers and are extractable to AI. 

We apply: 

• High-resolution formatting with clear headlines and supporting context
• Introductory blurbs that front-load answers
• Semantic markup and simple explanations are layered throughout the page

Treat citations as a new form of authority 

Appearing beside the AI’s answer is a trust signal. If Google’s AI chooses your page to represent a topic, you borrow its credibility. We design pages that are built to be cited. 

We apply: 

• Balanced, neutral language that feels safe to surface 
• External citations and linked sources that anchor the content 
• Insightful positioning that expands the conversation instead of repeating it 
• Follow Google’s SEO good practices and guidelines 

Layer topic depth instead of chasing breadth 

Pages that show up in SGE are rarely one-dimensional. They are the ones that anticipate adjacent questions and provide a complete view. We structure content to act like an index  instead of just a response. 

We apply: 

• Subtopic expansion to support the next three queries the user might ask 
• Crosslinking between deep-dive resources and summary-level pages 
• Structured “intent paths” that mimic how people actually search 

Build adaptive pages that respond to search environments 

SGE is still changing. What works today might evolve tomorrow. That is why we don’t just create content. We maintain and optimise it based on what’s showing up in live SERPs, SGE patterns, and AI behaviour. 

We apply: 

• Ongoing monitoring of AI citations, layout shifts, and scroll thresholds 
• SERP testing to see which formats get pulled into AI answers 
• Content adjustments based on page rankings and observed shifts in visibility and engagement. 

This framework is built on live performance data, SGE observations, and the search behaviour we track across our clients. The result? The pages we manage are ranking and also showing up inside the answers that Google’s AI overview puts first. 

Search is evolving, and with it, the way content earns attention and trust. At Mindesigns, we focus on building strategies that work with AI, not against it. If you need support with your business’s content creation strategy, get in touch with our team.