Google’s next step for its Search Generative Experience is SGE while browsing. In Chrome on desktop and in the mobile Google app on iOS and Android, Google SGE can summarize longer web page content for you. Yea, it is similar to Bing Chat’s Edge sidebar feature.
Google wrote, “SGE while browsing was specifically designed to help people more deeply engage with long-form content from publishers and creators, and make it easier to find what you’re looking for while browsing the web.” “On some web pages you visit, you can tap to see an AI-generated list of the key points an article covers, with links that will take you straight to what you’re looking for directly on the page,” Google added.
That means that this won’t work on all pages but it should work on longer form pages.
Google told me the page needs to be indexed by Google Search for it to work. Plus, if the page is behind a paywall and uses the paywalled structured data, Google SGE while browsing won’t work either. There is no special meta tag to tell Google SGE while browsing to not summarize your page.
Google said if you’re already opted into SGE, you’ll automatically have access to this experiment. Also, if you haven’t already opted in,“SGE while browsing” is also available as a standalone experiment in Search Labs.
Here is what it looks like in Chrome (click to enlarge):
Here is what it looks like in the mobile app:
Users do need to click “Generate” for this to work, it does not automatically summarize pages by default.
This goes live with the definition links in the SGE responses today.
It does work:
And more, this time with ‘Explore on a page’ which uses scroll-to-text highlighting like featured snippets do. For this example, you see both ‘Explore on a page’ and the SGE summary. pic.twitter.com/P8qbKvZIx9
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 15, 2023
Google SGE while browsing – how ai handles content about itself pic.twitter.com/LDLxUr9x1c
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 15, 2023
Note: If you have paywalled content but are not using structured data to communicate that to Google, then SGE while browsing may work:
As another example, here’s an article on theinformation .com, which does use paywall structured data. ‘SGE while browsing’ does not provide a summary or ‘Explore on page’ bullets. Like I’ve said for a while, publishers need to get on board with paywall structured data… 🙂 pic.twitter.com/0s06TquQLN
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 16, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter and WebmasterWorld.
