Google Marketing Live 2024

---

Share this Post:

BACKGROUND

Google Marketing Live took place on May 21st this year. This is Google’s annual live keynote event where they announce their newest Ads innovations and product enhancements. In recent years, Google has been stressing the importance of AI and how this will impact all marketing aspects for advertisers and brands. This year’s event expressed that same sentiment.

OVERVIEW

Overall updates that were announced included creative updates in-platform, testing ads in AI Overviews, new reporting enhancements, and more. The most relevant of these updates to the digital marketing ecosystem were announcements related to:

• Google Ads being tested in AI Overviews
• Advances being made for Demand Gen campaigns
• Continued shifts in user search behavior data

With these recent announcements, there will be implications and changes that impact search and SEO as we know it.

IMPLICATIONS & OPPORTUNITIES

Google has recently integrated advanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques into search engines. These techniques allow Google’s AI systems to retrieve relevant documents and integrate them into the response generation process. This significantly impacts SEO strategies for websites. As Google’s AI becomes more adept at understanding complex queries and retrieving contextually relevant information, website owners and SEO professionals must:

• Focus on producing high-quality, authoritative content that aligns with users’ search intent.
• Emphasize structured data, rich media, and comprehensive content that addresses specific queries to improve visibility in the enhanced search ecosystem.

Optimizing for semantic search and ensuring that content is easily retrievable by search engines will be crucial for maintaining and improving SERP rankings in this new era of AI-driven search.

ORCHARD’S THINKING

The impacts of AI on search and beyond continue. Our initial intake of this new information from Google has pushed 3 topics into the forefront at Orchard.

1. Staying agile in SEO strategy to adjust to the ongoing impacts of AI on search.
2. Determining if branding and brand awareness, once again, become a top priority and a place to win.
3. Watching Paid Search Ad user engagement within the new AI overview experience and assessing impact.

At Orchard, our team has put AI and its impact on Google at the forefront of our ongoing research. Our team continues to monitor these updates and advancements and will be sure to share further information as needed. Please feel free to reach out with questions or concerns on how this may impact your digital strategy – we’re here to help.

Share this Post: