AI Overviews launch
Google graduated SGE into AI Overviews and rolled it out to all US users by default, with international expansion following.
What changed
At Google I/O 2024 Google announced that AI Overviews would begin appearing for all users in the United States without opting in, powered by a custom Gemini model, and said it expected to reach over a billion people by the end of the year. The feature places a generated summary with source links above conventional results for many informational queries. Early rollout produced widely publicised incorrect answers, and Google subsequently restricted the feature for some query classes and added quality safeguards. Publishers have reported reduced click-through rates on queries where an overview appears, and Google has said content policies and technical eligibility follow ordinary Search indexing rules.
Timing
Rollout began 14 May 2024. No completion date was announced. Rankings typically remain unstable for the whole rollout window, so measurements taken inside it are not a reliable read on the outcome.