If you’ve looked at your rankings recently and everything seems to be in the right place, but you’ve seen a drop in traffic, it’s happening to almost all businesses across most industries, and it’s due to AI Overviews. They’re not caused by a drop in rankings, or missing backlinks, or links used to rank above you.
What Are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries at the top of Google search results. Google constructs an answer to the search query using multiple sources. They display the answer on the search results page and provide the search user the exact information they are looking for without the user having to navigate to any of the websites.
Until recently, the first ranking position also meant getting the bulk of the clicks. This is changing. AI Overviews are said to be capturing 34% of the clicks that used to go to the first organic position. You haven’t lost any ranking positions, but you have lost visibility, as this is the only position that matters when looking at your business.
Why is this suddenly the case?
User behavior is changing, and Google is taking advantage of this opportunity.
Users are no longer interested in a list of websites to browse through to answer their query. Google is now providing AI Overviews instead of a list of web links.
Each search that Google solves for the user on its own site means loss of control over the user experience for that search and loss of ad space around that search. So, Google’s goal with every search is to keep the user on Google. AI overviews are improved enough that Google is ready to display AI overview results for many, many questions.
What this means for people who rely on SEO
If your business exists because of search, all of the things that will happen as a result of this will impact you, even if it will not seem important at first.
- The reports for your traffic will seem like they should be worse, even if you do have good SEO.
- People performing informational searches, like “what is” and “how to” searches, will be most negatively impacted. Queries that are aimed at finding things to buy and answers for very specific searches will be least impacted.
- Getting quoted by Google, instead of being the top link, will become important. If Google’s AI Overview is using your information, you will get quoted, and at least have your name out there, even if you do not get a click.
Being the top link will still be important, but it will be less important than having Google cite you.
It means the shape of the reward for ranking high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) has changed, and companies that focus only on position will continue to be confused about what happened to their traffic.
What you can actually do about it
Optimise for the answer, not the keyword
AI-generated Overviews prefer content that answers a question concisely. If your content aims to answer a specific query, but does so after three lengthy and unnecessary paragraphs, your content is unlikely to be summarised. Answer the query as early as possible, then elaborate. This structure is also optimal for human readers.
Get your structured data in order
Schema markup may not guarantee inclusion of the content in AI Overviews, however, it does make it easier for Google to understand the content, the query it answers, and the trustworthiness of the source. As a starting point, a content driven website can implement FAQ, HowTo and Article schema.
Build demand outside of the search results page
The traffic AI Overviews don’t reach is the traffic that reaches you with your name. If your brand is being searched for directly, or if traffic is being driven to your website via email, social media, referrals, or people typing your website URL directly into the browser address bar, than nothing Google Search does will affect that traffic. This demand is easily the largest opportunity most companies neglect.
Diversify where your web traffic originates from
Having 80% or more of your traffic flow from organic search results makes your business vulnerable to changes that are outside of your control.
SEO will continue to play a huge part in business. However, a volatile single channel will be mitigated by your use of email, PPC, organic social and partnerships.
You should track visibility instead of obsessing over rankings. Rank checking tools only show you your rank. They provide no context on visibility and are completely inadequate. Track impressions, clicks and if your tool gives you visibility for AI Overviews for your primary search queries. This metric will provide you visibility on the changes happening to your traffic.
Ranking first still has value, but it has changed. Google is intercepting more than one third of what used to be guaranteed clicks for the top ranking result. Your content must be optimised for answers, your structured data must be robust and you must cultivate demand outside of Google’s domain in order to have any hope of being successful with the other strategies.
We can shut your rankings dashboard down and give you objective data on where your organic traffic is bleeding, along with workable strategies.
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