How Google’s AI Overviews Impact SEO
In May 2024, Google flipped the switch on its Google AI Overviews. Previously a part of its Google Labs programs, Google began serving AI Overview results for more and more queries, leveraging its substantial investment in artificial intelligence to provide accurate, detailed information right on the SERP.
It’s no stretch that it’s changing how brands measure organic search performance.
What Is Google AI Overview?
AI Overviews feature on the search engine results page (SERP) and endeavor to provide a summary of various search results without users clicking on a URL. Overviews pull (or steal, depending on your perspective) content from web pages to provide a short response while including links to relevant pages.
The Overview responses are generated by Google’s Gemini, its large language model (LLM). Gemini features in several Google products, including opt-in integrations with Google Sheets, Docs, Gmail, and its Google Assistant.
This AI Overview includes 13 links in the response and 4 in the “Learn More” box - that’s before you see even a single “normal” search result!
Why It Matters
Google has been inching closer to a zero-click SERP for over a decade, but this is different. Overviews are generated for nearly half of all organic search results in Google and take up 48% of screen space on mobile. While other SERP features (think local packs, featured snippets, etc.) are part of the results page, AI Overviews essentially are the results. There’s increasing evidence that AI Overiews take traffic from other sites by answering user queries without the user needing to click.
One way to visualize the impact of AI Overviews on organic traffic is to check Google Search Console. Across our clients, most domains have seen domain-level impressions increase year-over-year; this is more pronounced among domains with sizeable blog libraries, many of which target the informational keywords Overviews love to serve. At the same time, click counts and click-through rates have declined since Overviews debuted in Q3 2024.
This Search Console property perfectly exemplifies the widening gap between SERP impressions and AI Overviews. The gap began in May and quickly became a chasm after Google’s two core algorithm updates, which started in October and finished in December.
AI Overviews and SEO: The Gameplan
It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that Google’s AI Overview sucks for SEO.
It doesn’t. Recent studies show that targeting and winning links in Overviews offers incredible results. As Search Engine Land notes, pages included in Overviews receive 1.2 to 3.2x more clicks for transactional queries and 1.1 to 1.5x more clicks for informational queries than pages outside the feature.
Even more importantly, Overviews negatively impact results in the top 1-2 positions, but benefit results in positions 3-10.
This is huge for small brands, especially those competing with national franchises or retailers. It presents an opportunity to win clicks against the larger websites by jumping to the top of the SERP.
How We Target AI Overviews
When choosing keywords for new blog content or page optimizations, we test queries with a good old-fashioned Google search. If the results include an Overview (anecdotally, I haven’t seen a search without an Overview result in weeks), we mimic the summary to increase the odds of our content being used. This often dictates whether we use bullet points, headings and subheads or otherwise structure our copy to align with what Google serves.
Win Overviews, Win Customers
The SERP is always evolving, which is why we invest a lot of time researching Google’s algorithm changes and tweaking our content creation process. We’re committed to putting our clients one step ahead of their competitors, whether it's organic search, email marketing, or social media. We’re here to help; get in touch to start your next marketing project.