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Last month i pulled up Google Search Console and just stared at the screen for a while. Our main product page was still ranking #1 for our primary keyword. Position 1.0 average. But clicks were down 40% compared to same period last year.

I checked everything. No penalty. No algorithm hit. No technical issues. The page was still right there at the top. So what the hell happened?

The Answer Nobody Wants to Hear

AI Overviews happened. Turns out, Google started rolling those AI-generated summaries above the search results in mid-2024, and by early 2025 they covered something like 47% of all queries according to Authoritas research. For informational queries in our niche, it was way higher.

The thing is, when someone searches "how to optimize meta descriptions" and Google just... gives them the answer right there in a big blue box, they dont click through to your site. Why would they?

The data backs this up. Zero-click searches now account for roughly 60% of all Google searches. Thats not a typo. More than half the people searching on Google never click a single result. Rand Fishkin at SparkToro has been tracking this trend and honestly the numbers are worse than most people realize.

The CTR Collapse Is Real

Here's what really got me. A study from Seer Interactive found that AI Overviews reduced click-through rates by up to 58% for queries where they appeared. So even if your ranking doesn't change at all, your traffic can get cut in half.

And its not just affecting content sites. Product pages, documentation, SaaS landing pages. Anything where Google can synthesize an answer from your content and serve it directly.

I started looking at our keyword portfolio and categorizing every keyword by whether it triggered an AI Overview. The pattern was obvious:

• Keywords WITH AI Overviews: CTR dropped 35-58%
• Keywords WITHOUT AI Overviews: CTR stable or slightly up
• Long-tail keywords: mostly unaffected (for now)

What I Actually Did About It

First thing, stop panicking. The traffic isn't gone forever, its just being redistributed. But you need to change your strategy.

1. Audit which keywords trigger AI Overviews

This is the most important step and nobody does it. You need to actually check, query by query, which of your top keywords now have AI Overviews sitting above the results. I built a simple script to check this:

// Quick and dirty AI Overview detection
// Checks your top keywords for AIO presence
interface KeywordResult {
  keyword: string;
  hasAIOverview: boolean;
  position: number;
  ctrChange: number;
}

async function checkKeywordsForAIO(
  keywords: string[]
): Promise<KeywordResult[]> {
  const results: KeywordResult[] = [];

  for (const keyword of keywords) {
    const serp = await fetchSERP(keyword);
    const hasAIO = serp.features.includes('ai_overview');
    const gscData = await getGSCData(keyword);

    results.push({
      keyword,
      hasAIOverview: hasAIO,
      position: gscData.avgPosition,
      ctrChange: calculateCTRDelta(gscData, 90) // 90 day comparison
    });
  }

  return results.sort((a, b) => a.ctrChange - b.ctrChange);
}

2. Shift budget to AI Overview-resistant keywords

Some keyword types are much less likely to trigger AI Overviews. Comparison queries ("X vs Y"), opinion queries, anything requiring personal experience. And transactional queries with high commercial intent still mostly show regular results.

3. Get cited IN the AI Overview

This is the part most people miss. AI Overviews cite sources. If you cant beat the AI Overview, get your site listed as a citation inside it. The sites getting cited tend to have:

• Clear, structured data (schema markup matters more now)
• Authoritative, factual content
• Content thats already ranking in the top 5

4. Build direct traffic channels

Not gonna lie, this is the boring answer but its the right one. Email lists, communities, direct bookmarks. Any traffic source that doesnt depend on Google showing your link.

The Bigger Picture

What really concerns me is that this is just the beginning. Google is expanding AI Overviews to more query types. ChatGPT search is growing fast. Perplexity is eating into search volume. According to Search Engine Land, the percentage of queries with AI Overviews has been increasing month over month.

Thats actually why I built SiteCrawlIQ. It monitors which pages are losing clicks despite stable rankings, so you can spot the AI Overview problem before it tanks your traffic. No more manually cross-referencing Search Console data with SERP features.

The old SEO playbook of "rank higher, get more traffic" is breaking down. Ranking #1 doesnt mean what it used to. And if your entire growth strategy depends on organic search, you need to be looking at this right now.

What You Should Do This Week

1. Export your top 50 keywords from Search Console
2. Check which ones trigger AI Overviews (manually or with a tool)
3. Calculate CTR change over the last 6 months for each
4. Categorize: which keywords are AI Overview-resistant?
5. Reallocate your content efforts toward those resistant categories

The sites that figure this out early are going to be fine. The sites that keep doing SEO the 2022 way are going to keep watching their traffic bleed out while their rankings look perfect.

Thats the frustrating part. Your dashboard says everything is fine. But your business says otherwise.