If you have been watching your organic traffic and had a few question marks on the data since about 2024, you might have noticed it.
Your direct traffic might have taken sudden hit, but your organic visibility or impressions have increased significantly.
You will also no doubt have seen that Google’s search results page looks different to how it did two years ago, and for a growing number of queries, the top of the page is now occupied by something that was not there before: an AI-generated summary that attempts to answer the user’s question before they have clicked on a single result.
These are Google AI Overviews, and they represent the most significant change to how search results are presented in a decade. For SEOs, digital marketers and business owners who depend on organic traffic, understanding what AI Overviews are is critical. You need to know how they work and what they mean for visibility and traffic.
This understanding is key to making sound decisions about your search strategy in 2026 and beyond.
This article explains what AI Overviews are, how they are changing search behaviour, what the impact on organic traffic looks like, which content tends to appear in them, and what you can do to adapt your SEO strategy or copywriting strategy effectively.
What are Google AI Overviews?
Google AI Overviews, previously known during testing as the Search Generative Experience (SGE), are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of certain search results pages.
They are powered by Google’s Gemini model and are designed to give users answers to their question directly within Google’s SERPs, drawing on content from multiple sources across the web to generate an answer.
Rather than presenting a list of ten blue links and leaving the user to find the answer themselves, an AI Overview attempts to do that work for them.
It pulls relevant information from several sources and often includes a small list of those sources on the right-hand side. You can then follow those source links, but for many questions, the answer is presented in full on the page without any need to click through to an external site.
AI Overviews were rolled out to all US users in May 2024 and have since expanded to other markets, with the UK among them. However, they do not appear for every query.
Google continues to show traditional results for many searches, particularly for transactional searches, local searches, and topics where real-time or authoritative information matters such as news items.
But for informational and how-to searches, which represent a large portion of all searches, AI Overviews are taking over.
How AI Overviews have changed the Search Results Page
The introduction of AI Overviews has seriously overhauled the layout and hierarchy of the search results page.
Where position one used to mean being at the top of the screen, it now means being the first result below a block of information, typically somewhere further down and requiring scrolling down.
This info can span several paragraphs and occupy a significant portion of the screen.
For most people, this changes how they interact with search.
Google is increasingly turning its search engine into the destination rather than a gateway to other websites.
Someone who gets an answer from AI Overview has less reason to scroll down, click through, or interact with other results at all.
These searches without any clicks are increasingly common and will need to be accounted for in any organic search strategy.
Other changes to the SERP layout include:
- Featured snippets appearing less frequently for queries where an AI Overview is shown, since both serve a similar function
- The People Also Ask section continuing to appear but often positioned below the AI Overview rather than near the top
- Paid ads remaining in their usual positions above and below organic results, meaning the organic section is now further down the page than ever before
- Source attribution panels appearing within or alongside AI Overviews, giving some sites a form of visibility without a traditional ranking
The impact on organic traffic and click-through rates
The honest answer about the traffic impact of AI Overviews is that it depends on the search terms used, the industry and the site in question.
However, the general direction of travel is clear: for informational queries where AI Overviews appear, organic click-through rates have declined.
We have seen that since the wider rollout of AI Overviews, searches that trigger an AI Overview see meaningfully lower click-through rates than similar searches that don’t.
However, the picture is not entirely negative. There are several important nuances worth pointing out:
- Transactional queries, such as searches where the user intends to buy, book or contact, are much less likely to trigger an AI Overview, meaning commercial organic traffic is less affected than informational traffic. Ecommerce businesses are typically less impacted by AI overviews.
- We have observed that the quality of traffic visiting clients has gone up, leading to higher conversion rates as traffic is more relevant
- Branded queries and local searches continue to behave much as they did before, with traditional results remaining prominent
- Sites that are cited as sources within AI Overviews can gain brand visibility and some referral traffic, even if click volumes are lower than a traditional ranking
- The overall volume of searches continues to grow, which partially offsets lower click-through rates on individual queries
For organic strategies with a heavy focus on informational content to drive top-of-funnel traffic, the impact is tangible and something that needs to be tackled.
Which types of content appear in AI Overviews?
Understanding what Google is after when generating AI Overviews is important for any site looking to make the most of this new feature.
Google’s systems do not simply pull the top-ranking result. Instead, they pull information from multiple sources and tend to go for content that demonstrates certain qualities.
Critically, this means that informative content is still very much alive and well in any healthy SEO strategy, as content that tends to appear in AI Overviews shares several characteristics:
Clear, direct answers to specific questions
AI Overviews are built to answer questions. Content that asks a question in a heading and then answers it directly and concisely in the copy beneath is perfect for AI overviews. Long preambles, excessive caveats, and vague introductions work against you here.
Strong E-E-A-T signals
Google’s emphasis on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) has been key for a successful SEO strategy for a while, but it is more important now than ever with the way AI Overview gets the information.
Content from sites with strong topical authority, clear author credentials, and a track record of accuracy has a higher chance of getting featured in AI Overviews from sites without those signals.
Well-structured, scannable content
Content that uses logical heading hierarchies, short paragraphs, and structured formats such as numbered steps or definition-style answers is easier for Google’s systems to parse and extract. Schema markup, particularly FAQ and How-to schema, provides additional structure that can support inclusion.
Topical depth and authority
Sites that cover a topic comprehensively across multiple pieces of well-linked content are better positioned than those with a single thin article on a subject. Building genuine content strategy around topic clusters and pillar content remains one of the most effective approaches for establishing the kind of topical authority that AI Overviews draw on.
How to optimise your content for AI Overviews
Optimising for AI Overviews is similar to what has been understood as “good SEO” for a while now.
This means that most of the work that helps you appear in AI Overviews are the same ones that improve your organic rankings more broadly.
The difference is in emphasis: certain elements matter more in an AI Overview context than they might have done previously.
Write to answer the question directly
Structure content so that the question you want to focus on appears clearly as a heading, and the answer follows immediately and concisely in the opening paragraph of that section. Do not make the reader work to find the answer, and do not pad the response with unnecessary context before delivering it.
Build and demonstrate topical authority
A single well-optimised page is rarely enough to generate AI Overview citations consistently. Google’s systems reward sites that cover a topic thoroughly. Investing in a structured content marketing approach, with pillar pages supported by related articles and strong internal linking, signals the kind of depth that increases your chances of being cited.
Use structured data
Implementing FAQ schema, HowTo schema, and other relevant structured data formats helps Google understand and extract your content more reliably. This is a core part of technical SEO that is worth reviewing if you have not done so recently, particularly for pages targeting informational queries.
Prioritise E-E-A-T signals throughout your site
Make sure author information is clear and credible, that your content is regularly reviewed and updated, and that you are citing authoritative sources where relevant. Link to external research, industry data, and authoritative references. E-E-A-T signals run through every piece of content and every page of your site.
Keep an eye on which searches have AI Overviews
Not all searches will show an AI Overview, and that distribution will continue to evolve. Use Google Search Console to track impressions and click-through rate changes over time and manually check which of your key target queries are now returning AI Overviews. This allows you to prioritise your optimisation efforts and identify where traffic displacement is occurring.
Is SEO dead?
Every time Google makes a significant change to how it surfaces results, we hear the same fearmongering:
“SEO is dead, and here is why”
Or we get asked the following:
“Is SEO still worth investing in?”
The answers, as they have been every time these questions have come up, is yes, SEO is still alive, and yes, SEO is still worth investing in.
AI Overviews do not replace the need for high-quality content and a technically sound website.
In fact, AI overviews rely on good content and a healthy website.
If you want to appear in AI Overviews, you need the kind of content that earns that citation. This means investing in quality, depth, structure and authority. That approach is identical to what we would recommend for any solid SEO strategy.
Users searching for products, services, local businesses, or specific brands are not seeing many AI overviews in their search journey. They are still seeing and clicking on organic results. Pulling the plug on organic marketing just because of concerns about informational traffic would be costly if it means you’re also losing out on transactional rankings & converting traffic as a result.
The right move is not to abandon SEO but to build a more balanced strategy that covers informational, navigational and commercial searches.
What to monitor going forward
AI Overviews are still evolving as Google continues to refine which searches they appear for and how information is chosen and displayed.
Staying informed and monitoring the right signals is important to make sure your strategy works.
Keep a close eye on:
- Click-through rate trends in Google Search Console
- Impressions versus clicks for key informational pages
- Which of your target keywords now show AI Overviews in search results
- Changes to Google’s own guidance on how AI Overviews work and which signals they use
- Industry data and research on AI Overview appearances
The fundamentals of what makes content valuable to Google have not changed. What has changed is how that content is presented to users, and at what point in the search journey they encounter it. Understanding that distinction is what allows you to adapt effectively rather than react to every headline about the death of organic search.
Review your SEO strategy in light of AI Overview
AI Overviews are a reason to take a good look at your current SEO strategy and identify where you need to make some changes.
AI Overviews and AI search in general presents as many opportunities as it does challenges for the companies that approach it with an open mind and a solid strategy.
At Logic Digital, we help businesses understand how changes like AI Overviews affect their organic visibility and build strategies that take the new SEO landscape into account.
If you want to review how your site is positioned for AI-powered search, get in touch with our team and we will take a look at where you stand and what the right next steps are.
