Google AI Overviews Are Replacing Your Traffic. Here Is What to Do.
What Is a Google AI Overview
A Google AI Overview is a box of AI-written text that appears at the very top of Google search results. It sits above every website listing, including position 1. Google reads several websites, writes a summary of the answer, and shows it to the user. The user can read the full answer without clicking anything.
Simple version: Think of a librarian who reads 10 books and writes you a one-page summary. Google is now that librarian. Some books get credited. Most do not. If your website is not one of the credited ones, you get no traffic from that search.
Google rolled out AI Overviews broadly in the US from May 2024. By late 2025, they appeared for around 82% of all B2B technology searches. For informational searches. Anything starting with "how", "what", "why" or comparing two things. An AI Overview almost always appears now.
Types a question into Google. Most B2B research questions now trigger AI Overviews.
AI reads multiple websites and writes a summary at the top of results.
Many users get the answer they needed and leave. Others click through to the cited websites.
Websites Google chose to quote see more clicks. The rest lose clicks they used to get.
The Real Traffic Drop Data
The clearest research on this comes from Seer Interactive, who tracked 3,119 search queries across 42 companies and 25 million search impressions over 15 months.
But that headline number tells only half the story. Seer's research also shows that websites cited inside the AI Overview box are getting a very different result. BrightEdge research found that sites cited within the AI Overview earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid search clicks compared to position 1 pages not cited in the overview.
What this means in plain terms: if Google reads your website and quotes it in the AI box, your traffic goes up. If Google ignores your website and only shows the AI summary, your traffic goes down. Even if you rank position 1 below the box. The businesses losing the most traffic are those who built their SEO around ranking in a list of ten results, not around being the source Google trusts enough to quote.
23,000+ founders get these insights weekly.
AI search changes, B2B organic strategy, and revenue infrastructure. Delivered before it is published anywhere else.
You are in. First briefing lands this week.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Who Is Gaining Traffic and Who Is Losing It
| Type of website | What is happening to their traffic | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Deep topic experts | Getting cited. Traffic rising | Google quotes the most complete source. A site with 10 articles on one subject wins over a site with 200 shallow articles on 50 subjects. |
| Original research publishers | Getting cited. Traffic rising | AI answers need facts. Sites with their own data, surveys or case studies get quoted because the information cannot be found elsewhere. |
| Broad content sites | Not cited. Traffic falling | Covering many topics shallowly gives Google nothing to quote. No depth means no trust. |
| Generic AI content publishers | Traffic down 60 to 80% | Google can tell when content is generic AI output. Websites relying on AI-generated text without genuine editorial work saw the biggest traffic drops in 2025. |
| Strong author credentials | Getting cited. Traffic rising | Named expert authors with verifiable experience give Google the trust signal it needs. Anonymous content gets less citation weight. |
How Google Picks Which Websites to Quote
Google has not published a rulebook for AI Overview selection. But researchers tracking thousands of cited pages have found consistent patterns.
The answer must be in the first sentence. Google's AI system reads the opening lines of each section on your page. If your page builds up context for 300 words before answering the actual question, Google will often skip it. Pages that answer the question immediately. In the first sentence. Get cited far more often than pages that save the answer for the middle or end.
Topic depth beats domain size. A smaller website that has published 12 focused articles on one subject will be cited more often than a large website with one article on that subject plus thousands of articles on unrelated topics. Google is looking for the most complete, trustworthy source on a specific topic. Not the biggest website.
Named experts help. Pages written by or attributed to a real person with verifiable credentials. A named author with a job title, a company, and a LinkedIn profile. Get more citation weight than anonymous pages. This is part of what Google calls E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Outside sources that mention you. If other credible websites, industry publications, or directories reference your brand in the context of this topic, Google uses that as a trust signal. This is similar to how backlinks work for regular rankings. But the quality of the mention matters far more than the quantity.
"Real opportunities remain for those who focus on authenticity, originality, and thought leadership. Publishing true expertise, building strong author credentials, and creating research that cannot be copied. That is what separates the sites gaining visibility in AI answers from those disappearing."
Lily Ray, VP SEO Strategy, Amsive, named #1 most influential SEO in the world, USA Today 2022What to Change on Your Website Right Now
You do not need to rebuild your entire website. Most B2B sites need three specific changes to start getting cited in AI Overviews.
Change 1: Answer the question in the first sentence of each section. Go through your most important pages. Find the main question each section is trying to answer. Put the answer in sentence one. Not sentence five. This single change is the most consistent factor across sites that get cited versus those that do not.
Change 2: Build depth on one topic before expanding. Pick the one subject your business has the most genuine expertise in. Publish a full set of articles covering every angle of that subject. The basics, the common questions, the comparisons, the step-by-step guides, the mistakes people make. When Google sees a site with 8 to 12 articles covering every aspect of one topic, it starts classifying that site as the authoritative source. That classification is what leads to consistent AI Overview citation.
Change 3: Add your name and credentials to your content. Every article on your site should have a named author with a job title, company name, and a link to their LinkedIn profile. If the content is based on real client experience, say so. If it includes original data, cite where it came from. These signals tell Google the content comes from genuine expertise, not generated text.
Schema Markup. The Code That Tells Google What Your Page Is About
Schema markup is a small amount of code added to a page that tells Google exactly what the page contains in a format Google can read instantly. Think of it as labels on a filing cabinet. Without labels, Google must read every document and guess what it is. With labels, Google knows immediately.
For getting into AI Overviews, three types of schema matter most for B2B websites:
| Schema type | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| FAQ schema | Tells Google which parts of your page are questions and answers | Any page with a Q&A section. This format matches exactly how AI Overviews work. Google looks for clean question-answer pairs. |
| Article schema | Tells Google the article headline, author name, job title, employer and publish date | Every article and blog post. Establishes the author as a real expert, not anonymous content. |
| HowTo schema | Marks up numbered step-by-step processes so Google reads them as instructions | Any process guides: how to calculate CAC, how to build a topical map, how to reduce ad spend. |
You do not need to write schema code manually. Groew's free Schema Generator builds the correct code for 13 page types. Copy and paste it into your page.
How to Track Whether It Is Working
You cannot see directly in Google Search Console whether your page is appearing in an AI Overview. But three signals tell you whether your content is moving in the right direction.
Impressions growing, clicks flat or falling. In Google Search Console, go to Search results and look at your Impressions and Clicks chart for the past 6 months. If impressions are growing but clicks are not keeping pace, it usually means an AI Overview has appeared for those searches and users are getting the answer without clicking. This confirms your content is being seen. But you are not yet the cited source.
Branded searches increasing. If people are searching your brand name more often without a specific prompt from you, it can mean they saw your brand cited in an AI answer and came back to find you. Track branded query volume in Search Console under Queries filtered to your brand name.
Traffic quality improving. Users who click through from an AI Overview citation arrive already having read the AI summary of your answer. They come more informed, stay longer, and convert at a higher rate. If your conversion rate is improving while traffic volume stays flat, AI Overview citation is often a contributing factor.
Mistakes That Make This Worse
Blocking Google's AI crawlers. Some site owners add GoogleBot-Extended (Google's AI crawler) to their robots.txt file to prevent content from being used in AI training. What this also does is prevent the site from being cited in AI Overviews. Blocking these crawlers is the equivalent of locking your shop door and wondering why no customers are coming in.
Publishing generic AI content to "keep up." Many B2B websites responded to falling traffic by publishing more articles using AI writing tools. Google's 2025 data shows websites that published generic AI content without genuine editorial work saw traffic drops of 60 to 80%. More content is not the answer. More useful, original, expert content is.
Stopping SEO entirely. Bain and Company research found that about 80% of users rely on AI summaries for at least 40% of their searches. The businesses that stop producing content now will be absent from both the AI summaries and the regular search results. Kevin Indig, organic growth advisor who has worked with Meta, Reddit, Dropbox and Ramp, put it clearly: marketing leaders need to stop building SEO for clicks and start building brand authority in AI-first search. The two goals are not in conflict. They use the same content.
After restructuring content for 12 B2B clients specifically to answer questions in the opening sentence of each section, AI Overview citations doubled within 8 weeks on average. One B2B SaaS client in the HR technology space went from zero AI Overview appearances to appearing in answers for 23 target queries. Traffic volume stayed flat. Branded search queries from that same audience went up 18% in the same period. Users were seeing the brand cited, trusting it, and searching for it directly. That is the shift: less traffic from unknown searches, more traffic from pre-qualified buyers who already know the brand.
Questions about Google AI Overviews
If AI Overviews are reducing your traffic, here is how Groew fixes it.
Building the content depth and author credibility that gets B2B websites cited.
Find out if your site is showing up in AI answers.
The free SEO Audit checks your technical setup, content structure, and schema. The three things that determine whether Google cites you or ignores you.