AI & Research
What Was the Search Generative Experience (SGE)?
Google's 2023 experiment in generative answers, which shipped as AI Overviews and later AI Mode. The name is now historical.
Definition
Search Generative Experience, or SGE, was the name of Google's experimental generative search feature launched through Search Labs in 2023. The experiment graduated into shipping products: AI Overviews, the generated summary that appears above results, and AI Mode, a conversational search surface. The SGE label is no longer the current terminology.
Why the name still appears
A large amount of writing from 2023 and 2024 refers to SGE, so the term persists in older analyses and in job descriptions. When reading that material it is worth checking the date, because the behaviour of the feature changed substantially between the Labs experiment and the shipped product.
What replaced it
- AI Overviews: a generated summary with links, shown above traditional results for some queries
- AI Mode: a dedicated conversational surface for follow up questions
- Generative AI performance data in Search Console, so owners can see this traffic separately
- A Search Console control that lets a site opt out of appearing in generative features
The practical implication
The shift is from optimising for a position in a list to optimising for inclusion in a synthesised answer. Google's stated position is that the fundamentals do not change, but the measurement does, because an impression inside an AI Overview does not behave like a classic result impression.
Website owners can use a new toggle in Search Console to decide if their site appears in generative AI Search features.