Since its initial launch back in May 2024, Google’s AI Overviews has grown in popularity, rolling out to over 100 different countries and appearing in approximately 30% of searches.
Over the past year, the size of these AI Overviews has grown from 600 pixels of screen space to 800, pushing the traditional organic search results further down the search engine results page.
The less visible your site is in search results, the lower the chances of a user clicking through.
With these AI (artificial intelligence)- generated results taking over much of the space “above the fold” (the portion of the page that is visible without the need to scroll down), it’s little wonder that we’re experiencing a drop in organic search traffic.
After all, if the answer they’re looking for is right there on the results page, why would they need to visit your site?
What are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are brief snippets of text generated by collating information from various different websites. These AI-generated summaries are displayed at the top of Google’s search results page in response to a user’s query.
The aim of these AI Overviews is to provide a clear and concise answer to a search query, directly on the results page. This limits the need for the user to click through to a website to find the information they’re looking for.
Impact of AI Overviews on Organic Search Traffic
AI Overviews appear on the results page for a wide variety of search queries, particularly those that ask questions or seek solutions to specific problems. These types of search queries typically start with phrases like “how to” “how do you” or “can you”.
For example, if a user searches for “How do you turn off automatic invites for groups connected to your Facebook page?” an AI Overview appears at the top of the results, summarising the answer directly on the search results page.
In this case, we appear as a featured source of information for this AI Overview, meaning that information in our blog ‘How do you turn off automatic invites for groups connected to your Facebook page?’, along with content from similar sources, is being used by Google’s AI to generate the answer.
Additionally, we also have the first organic search result for this query, appearing directly below the AI Overview.
Despite having strong visibility on the results page for this query, both as a featured source and holding the top organic blue link, the presence of this AI Overview significantly reduces the likelihood of users clicking through to our website.
By providing users with step-by-step instructions to their search query directly on the results page, the AI Overview eliminates the need for users seeking this information to click through to our site. In effect, Google’s AI Overviews are essentially stealing the organic search traffic that we may have typically received.
While some drops in traffic may be attributed to seasonal trends, shifts in searcher intent or content relevance, the growing presence of AI Overviews and no-click searches are making it more and more difficult to drive organic search traffic through to your site.
AI overviews are transforming the search results page, significantly reducing the levels of organic search traffic that websites are receiving by providing answers directly within the search results page.
To stay ahead, online businesses must adapt their SEO (search engine optimisation) strategies to provide more value than a simple AI-generated answer.
Need help navigating the impact of AI on search? Reach out to the team at Engage Web today – we make it our mission to stay one step ahead of the curve.
- What is answer engine optimisation (AEO?) - October 10, 2025
- What is topical authority? - September 30, 2025
- How to track AI traffic in Google Analytics 4 - September 29, 2025
