Sourced Search & AEO Statistics
We build for how search and answer engines actually work — not for rumors. The table below collects facts we reference in our work, and every row is attributed to a named, dated, public source: official Google announcements, web.dev / Google Search Central documentation, and W3C standards. We deliberately leave out unsourced "X% of users do Y" percentages. If we cannot point to a primary source, it is not on this page.
Note: All figures below are sourced and dated. Where a feature rolled out over a window, we cite the announced rollout period. Dates reflect official announcements, not third-party estimates.
Search & AI answer milestones
| Fact | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Google began rolling out AI Overviews (formerly the Search Generative Experience / SGE) broadly to everyone in the US, with more countries to follow. | May 2024 | Google — "Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you," The Keyword / Google I/O 2024 |
| Google introduced the Search Generative Experience (SGE) as an opt-in experiment in Search Labs. | May 2023 | Google — "Supercharging Search with generative AI," The Keyword / Google I/O 2023 |
| The Helpful Content System (originally the "helpful content update") launched, targeting content written primarily for search engines rather than people. | August 2022 | Google Search Central — "More content by people, for people in Search" |
| The Helpful Content System was integrated into Google's core ranking systems as part of the March 2024 core update, rather than running as a separate signal. | March 2024 | Google Search Central — "What web creators should know about our March 2024 core update and new spam policies" |
| Google added an "Experience" component to its quality guidance, expanding E-A-T to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). | December 2022 | Google Search Central / Search Quality Rater Guidelines update |
| Gemini (formerly Bard) launched as Google's conversational AI; the product was rebranded from Bard to Gemini. | Bard: Feb/Mar 2023 · Renamed Gemini: Feb 2024 | Google — "An important next step on our AI journey" (Bard) and "Bard becomes Gemini," The Keyword |
Core Web Vitals & page experience
| Fact | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Google introduced Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS) as a defined set of real-world, user-centric page experience metrics. | May 2020 | web.dev / Google — "Evaluating page experience for a better web" |
| Core Web Vitals became a ranking signal as part of the Page Experience update, which rolled out gradually. | June – August 2021 (desktop completed early 2022) | Google Search Central — "Evaluating page experience" / Page Experience update announcements |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) replaced First Input Delay (FID) as a Core Web Vital metric for responsiveness. | March 2024 | web.dev / Google — "INP is officially a Core Web Vital" |
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) "good" threshold is 2.5 seconds or less; Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) "good" threshold is 0.1 or less; INP "good" threshold is 200 milliseconds or less. | Current thresholds (as documented 2024) | web.dev / Google — Core Web Vitals metric documentation |
Structured data & rich results
| Fact | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Schema.org — the vocabulary used for structured data / rich results — was launched as a collaboration between Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and later Yandex. | June 2011 | Schema.org — official launch announcement |
| Google restricted FAQ rich results to "well-known, authoritative government and health websites" and limited HowTo rich results to desktop, sharply reducing eligibility for most sites. | August 2023 | Google Search Central — "Changes to FAQ and HowTo structured data" |
| Google retired support for HowTo rich results entirely; the markup no longer produces a rich result in Search. | 2023 (deprecation continued into 2024) | Google Search Central — structured data documentation / changelog |
Accessibility & web standards
| Fact | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|
| WCAG 2.2 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) became a W3C Recommendation, adding criteria such as Focus Not Obscured, Dragging Movements, and Target Size (Minimum). | October 2023 | W3C — "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2" Recommendation |
| WCAG 2.1 became a W3C Recommendation, introducing criteria for mobile, low vision, and cognitive accessibility. | June 2018 | W3C — "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1" Recommendation |
| The US Department of Justice published a final rule under ADA Title II requiring state and local government web content and mobile apps to conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA, with compliance deadlines phased by entity size (large entities: April 2026; smaller: April 2027). | Rule published April 2024 | US Department of Justice — ADA Title II web/mobile accessibility final rule (28 CFR Part 35) |
Why we keep this page
AEO and SEO are crowded with confident-sounding numbers that have no traceable origin. As an SDVOSB studio in Cassville, Missouri, ThatDevPro would rather cite a Google engineering blog post or a W3C Recommendation than repeat a statistic we cannot verify. If you find a row here that has drifted out of date, or a source we have mis-cited, tell us and we will correct it.
Sources are linked to the original announcing organization (Google, web.dev, W3C, US DOJ, Schema.org). Dates reflect official publication or announced rollout windows. Last reviewed June 2026.