Law firms are beginning to explore what the search generative experience (SGE) means for them. Surely, most law firm marketing directors or partners have spoken to their marketing agencies, and there may be some internal panic.
At Blue Seven Content, we only generate written content for law firm websites, so SGE has the potential to significantly affect our business. In fact, if SGE and ChatGPT play out how many in the industry think, we won’t have a business at all.
But I don’t think it’s as bad as people think. So far, as I’ve delved into SGE responses for law firms and law-related queries, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how it’s working.
The Law Firm Short-Tail Keywords
When thinking about where to begin my search generative experience journey, I figured the best place to start would be where it all started for me – typical keywords for crafting a law firm practice area page.
You know what I’m talking about:
- Los Angeles personal injury lawyer
- Car accident lawyer in Denver
- Palmdale slip and fall attorney
When it comes to the SGE results, it doesn’t currently seem like Google is trying to make waves. I typed in “medical malpractice attorney Charleston SC,” after I geocoded my location to Charleston. First, I got the usual SERP results, but there was also a “generate AI response” option for me to press:
When I clicked the AI button, it seemed like it pulled a list of medical malpractice attorneys in the area, and it appeared to reward reviews from various sources (uh oh, back come the directories?). However, what doesn’t seem to play a role in this generative response (yet) are the PPC or organic results you’d usually find on the SERP. They give these as 4- or 5-pack for each search:
At the bottom of the SGE response, there were a few prompts for related follow-up questions, presumably what people typically ask around the same time they are looking for a medical malpractice lawyer:
- How long do you have to sue for medical malpractice in South Carolina?
- What is the statute for medical malpractice in South Carolina?
- What are the limits for malpractice in SC
These types of responses are the norm for SGE when you type in the usual keywords that would bring you to a law firm practice area page. It does not yet give you an automatic generative response – you have to choose to click it.
We should really pay attention to the follow-up queries on the bottom of these responses. These are the type of long-tail keywords that lead to responses we already write answers for, but this gives us an idea of what Google (and readers) want to see.
These types of queries are harder for SGE to even make a coherent response for. What are they going to do – describe what a car accident or family law attorney is? No, I think these queries will remain relevant to the traditional SERP results.
However, the long-tail keyword queries are a different story.
The Law Firm Long-Tail Keywords
I’ve predicted that Google would keep legal queries YMYL, but that may not actually be the case. Of course, this is all still experimental, so I may be proven right. I could just as easily be proven wrong.
So, I decided to delve into general queries such as “steps to take after a slip and fall accident” or “when should I call a lawyer after a car accident.”
I’ve found that these types of searches generate an automatic SGE response. For these queries, we’re getting a response you could expect to find on ChatGPT, except Google can draw from, well, Google. This AI can access the internet.
When you type in these types of searches, the SGE does give you a response, and it does show a 3-pack (4-pack if you scroll right) of pages where it draws its answer from. Usually, these are law firms, but there are other sources, depending on your question.
My immediate questions, and ones that people smarter and with more experience than me are tackling, are:
- What makes a page “good” for SGE to draw from?
- How do we best optimize for SGE?
I geocoded myself to Charleston, SC, again and typed “steps for a medical malpractice case in Charleston.” I got the SGE answer straight away, above the fold:
You can see a small photo of, supposedly, where the information used to generate the response comes from. Again, I want to know what makes these the “best” pages to use for an SGE response.
Again, we get the same follow-up prompts on the bottom that we got when we looked up the “medical malpractice attorney Charleston SC.”
Below the SGE, we go right into what we’re used to seeing on the SERP, but not sponsored ads. It goes right into the organic search results (my content writer’s heart sings when ads aren’t first), but I also know that so many searchers won’t go beyond the SGE response.
Something funny happened when I typed, “when should you call a lawyer after a construction accident.” I got the sponsored results first, and THEN I got the SGE response in the middle of the page, finally followed by the organic results:
I’m sure these results will be replicated the more I play with SGE queries. Again, Google is experimenting with all of this, and they will try to figure out what works best for the average user AND for them. Google is not going to throw away revenue, so having the sponsored results show up first shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Do We Already Know How to do This?
As I think about law firms and search generative experience exploration, I was curious as to how this would work when I entered the keywords that Blue Seven Content usually ranks well for anyway. First, I typed in “law firm practice area pages”:
We already ranked second in organic for this keyword (on most days), and we show up in the SGE as well. Look what happens when I expand the SGE result:
When I expand it out, Blue Seven ranks number one in the SGE response. Now, the results don’t show the meta description that we have for that page, but that’s not surprising. Google has a way of looking at your meta and ignoring it anyway, so there’s that.
I did the same with “law firm FAQ pages” because we’re frequently number one with that search. Here’s the result:
Here, we show up number one in organic SERP and number one and two in the SGE response:
We Still Have ChatGPT to Deal With
As I’ve noted multiple times before, ChatGPT is a “threat” to us legal content writers. Not legal marketing agencies, though. Legal marketing agencies that handle all of a law firm’s online marketing will always be around, and they’ll adapt. No, it’s the content writers who have to worry.
But do we?
Okay, maybe some legal content writers have to worry. The ones who can’t produce content better than ChatGPT are certainly on the chopping block. But that was always going to be the case. What I think will happen, as I’ve said before, is that ChatGPT has had its sugar rush. It’s given the industry a high (or a bad trip, depending on what your role is).
But as I’ve toyed around with Google’s SGE, I’ve seen that good content matters. Google is meeting AI in a way that (1) provides simple answers that users are looking for and (2) seeks to maintain the main revenue driver for the platform – ads.
For now, SGE results are generally pulling answers from well-ranking organic content that already answers, or closely answers, the search query. Could SGE end up pulling content that someone generated with ChatGPT and published? Yes, of course. But not if that content isn’t better than what’s already out there.
Currently, ChatGPT has many flaws. Phantom court cases and rulings. Massive plagiarism. Predictable writing that reeks of AI. Zero human touch.
And, of course, there’s the issue of what happens to content online when ChatGPT gains access to the internet (it’ll happen eventually) and begins learning new stuff based on content people have generated using ChatGPT. It’s a self-feeding loop with little new input from actual humans.
Content degradation is waiting to happen.
Was there content degradation with human legal content writers consistently regurgitating each other? Of course there was. This is why I’ve said I’m grateful to ChatGPT for snapping us (at least Blue Seven) out of any comfort zone we may have fallen into.
We have to constantly improve. We have to be better content creators, thinkers, researchers, and writers. Writers have to be better than the silver bullet LLMs that many (lazy) marketers think will be their golden ticket.
With my intro research into SGE responses to legal queries, I’m positive that quality, human-written content will reign supreme. Humans can and should use the tools available at their disposal, much like SEOs use Ahrefs, Semrush, and Clearscope. They should use tools like editors use, including Copyscape, Grammarly, or Hemingway. These technological advancements didn’t kill the SEO or the editor, and those who are good at their craft don’t completely rely on the tools. Because they are tools used to build the larger product – a good piece of writing.
Law Firms and Search Generative Experience (SGE) – My Take for Now
I think SGE will seek to answer basic queries with assistance from results that already rank. Perhaps this will go to paid results eventually, but Google is drawing from organic results for now. Ranking in SGE will be more competitive because it’s taking from 3 or 4 organic sources now, then the rest of the SERP responses appear.
Who knows what this will look like in six months or a year, but I don’t think it’s the death of the legal content writer. I think it’s the beginning of a new search experience, and we have to adapt. What we’re adapting to is still up in the air. How will law firms respond to search generative experience? Stand by, we’ll be back for more.
Written by Allen Watson – Founder and CEO of Blue Seven Content