Everything cleaners need to know about new Google AI tools and what they mean for business

By Ciaran Martin, Senior Local SEO Consultant from Add People digital marketing agency

At Google’s I/O conference this May, AI was the hottest topic as the search giant announced a range of AI tools that will be rolled out across the world during 2024. Following the conference, many of these tools started to appear in organic searches being conducted in the US. 

These tools, including AI-enhanced video search, AI overviews and AI-organised search results represent a major change in how Google will display results for particular searches. More than half of people in need of cleaning services run online searches before converting, meaning being prepared for changes to search engine results is essential for maximising your business.

By understanding these new tools and taking steps to optimise your site now, you can ensure you’re ready for the changes to boost your organic presence and rake in the benefits.

AI overviews

Brought in as a way of providing a summary of a query, Google has introduced AI overviews to quickly meet the needs of the person searching. While some kinks need to be worked out, Google searches will soon feature these AI summaries for a breadth of queries, including “how-to” content that’s common with cleaning issues.

Making sure you’re creating “how-to” content that relates to your cleaning services and sharing this content as blogs and videos will ensure that you have answers that the AI can use to create its overviews. 

While this may seem like it’s going to take traffic away from your site, Google’s AI includes its references in the AI snippet. These references get more prominence and are richer than your typical search results which could lead to more click-through.

Whether these AI overviews actually lead to more clicks is yet to be determined but the fact of the matter is that these overviews will appear at the top of search results and that’s a valuable place to be.

AI-organised search results

In addition to AI overviews, search results will soon be organised into AI-generated categories. For cleaning searches, this could mean that businesses are grouped by the services they offer or important keywords that people use in reviews and other content. 

This means that having clear, keyword-focused content and pages is going to be even more important in attracting attention in search results as Google aims to help people get more specific with their search choices.

This could also mean that the dominance position one currently holds may not be as strong once the AI-organised search results become more common as people use them to explore the search results more thoroughly before clicking through.

Lens search with video

Google AI is advancing search results beyond just text in a search box. Starting in the US, users will soon be able to combine videos on Google Lens with searches to find answers to questions about the content of their videos.

For example, if a person has questions about a particular stain or having difficulty with a challenging clean-up job, they’ll be able to video their problem and ask questions about the video before Lens translates this video into a Google search.

For cleaning businesses, having step-by-step guide content on a range of issues relating to particular cleaning problems you deal with for your customers, as well as your own video content on the issues can help Google find the best answers for these queries and use your content as a reference, similar to the AI overviews.

The importance of brand building in modern search

In addition to optimising your site for these particular new tools, the introduction of AI features to search results highlight the value of brand building in modern search. With so many new ways to engage with sites and a variety of ways for your site to be categorised, clear and consistent brand messaging is an essential way to stand out.

Being clear on what your brand is and using consistent messaging in your on-page and social media content will help Google categorise you properly through its new tools. Google is going to draw inspiration from a wide variety of content platforms, including forums, reviews, and social media sites so having a consistent presence across every platform is the key to building a strong online brand.

If you’re not clear how you can distinguish your brand from your competitors, you could start from your reviews or social interactions and choose some common threads to build on around customer service, quality and your unique selling points.

Adapting to the ever-changing face of search as a small business

As a small business owner, it can feel like a constant challenge to adapt to Google updates and keep your online presence going. By knowing what’s coming, you can properly prepare yourself and your site for new changes and get ahead of the game while also reviewing your existing site content.

Ultimately, Google’s main objective is to provide valuable, quality content to its users so making this your priority in everything you do will help you weather the storm as much as possible. As customer service is so essential for cleaning businesses, making sure this comes through in your online presence will help communicate the value of your business.