Google’s artificial intelligence or AI-powered search engine is getting more upgrades three months after its first beta release. This new update includes three features perfect for students, learners or anyone researching a new topic or learning a new skill.

According to Google in their Keyword Blog, these new AI capabilities will “help you better learn and make sense of information on the web,” such as understanding difficult concepts, learning how to code and delving deeper into a complex topic.

Let’s take a look at these features in more detail below:

• Contextual Definitions: Google’s AI-generated responses will now provide a preview of definitions for unfamiliar terms that you may come across. Diagrams and images will also accompany the definitions so it’s easier for you to understand them. You can then click these context links to learn more about the term.
• Color-Coded Syntax Highlights: If you’re learning a new coding skill, Google’s SGE will now highlight and color-code coding segments on their overviews. This way, you can quickly identify elements, such as keywords, comments and strings, making it easier to digest code information right from the search engine results pages (SERPs).
• SGE While Browsing: Researching a complex topic can take hours, and this new feature aims to cut down those times. SGE will generate a list of crucial points inside a web page that you can click to navigate that page faster and find information more quickly. This feature is only available in the Google app for Android and iOS. However, Google promises this feature will grace Chrome for desktops “in the days ahead.”

If you’re a publisher with paywalled content, you don’t have to worry about SGE bypassing that. Google said SGE “does not provide key points on articles marked as paywalled, and publishers are in control.” 

These new features come after recent updates in Google’s privacy policy and other upgrades here and here. Google also encourages more users to give feedback about their experience inside their AI-powered search engine, so if you have some thoughts about SGE, be sure to leave them.

Compared to their biggest competitors, Bing Chat and ChatGPT, Google’s new features allow for a more engaging AI experience beyond the main Search and Chat interfaces. And since Google Search has always positioned itself as a go-to resource for faster information retrieval, these features should enhance the overall user experience.

While the overall search engine optimization (SEO) implications are yet to be realized, we now know that Google has plans to bring quality traffic from their SGE content, so it’s crucial to make your website easier to read, crawl and navigate.

For example, the SGE While Browsing feature might not work well with websites with unclear structure and navigation. Similarly, SGE’s context links are less likely to point to your website if your definitions are not helpful for users based on E-E-A-T guidelines.

Following SEO best practices is still the way to go, as Google’s AI content policy (and maybe a help document on how their SGE algorithms work) has yet to be released.

Read Google’s full rollout announcement here.

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Editor’s Note: “SEO News You Can Use” is a weekly blog post posted every Monday morning only on SEOblog.com, rounding up all the top SEO news from around the world. Our goal is to make SEOblog.com a one-stop-shop for everyone looking for SEO news, education and for hiring an SEO expert with our comprehensive SEO agency directory.