The Hidden Truth: How AI Overviews Are Destroying Your SEO Traffic (And What to Do About It)

Have you noticed how, nowadays when you search something on Google you will frequently see a little scrupulous AI-generated summary at the top. That is what is referred to as an AI Overview- and, it is transforming the game in SEO.  I’ll show you why the negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO are undermining your clicks, how it’s damaging your organic reach, and how you can combat it. Here is a topic of negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO, so we should go in and figure out how it is working.

What Are AI Overviews?

In simple terms, AI Overviews is a practice by Google to present a direct answer to their search result page (SERP). In case you use the informational keyword, such as “how to bake sourdough,” what is XYZ,” or “Negative Impacts of AI Overviews on SEO,” Google may present a brief snippet consisting of data extracted by several sites before the organic search. This is led by Google Search Generative Experience, later rebranded to AI Overviews in the middle of 2024, and made available worldwide by October 2024.

The concept is convenience: Google wishes to present you with the solution before you have to click on any. There is a downside to that as far as SEO is concerned, however.

What is worrying about this is the rate of adoption. The usage of AI Overviews has increased by 13 percent and more, and it is growing fast in all searches. This is a game changer as to how people engage with search results on the web sites that they have owned and the content they have created and it is not a good one.

The Scale of the Problem: Why Every SEO Should Be Worried

Prior to delving into the concrete adverse effects of AI reviews on these SEO, we should comprehend the extent. It is not a simple adjustment of the algorithm. It is a radical overhaul of the way Google is organized to provide information, and it is also occurring quickly.

Think of this: There are more than 8.5 billion searches per day by Google. Assuming that 13 percent of those queries (and increasing) contain AI Overviews thus more than 1 billion searches each day where your organic listings are being moved down or not even shown at all. Negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO is not minor issue- that is existential threat to organic traffic.

The roll out plan has been fierce as well. The experiment in Search Labs at first was limited in scope but became a feature worldwide impacting all the major markets. Google did not phase into this shift; they applied it at scale, and many sites were left to guess why the number of their visitors has drastically decreased.

Core Negative Impacts of AI Overviews on SEO

1. Sharp Click‑Through Rate (CTR) Decline

When AI Overviews are present, there are much less clicks on organic links. In a study by the Pew Research Center in March 2025, a study of actual browsing habits revealed one of the starkest negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO:

• CTR Non-AI Overviews was 15 percent
• CTR with AI Overviews falls by almost 50% to ~8 percent
• Links that appear in the AI Overview click-through rate is only 1%.

This is strengthened by other studies. Amsive ranked on top results resulted in ~15 percent decrease in CTR and in case it is not the top 3, it reduces to ~27 percent. GrowthSRC reported that position-one CTR declined to ~19% after the AI Overview had been rolled out (down ~28%).

But this is what is really distressing: it is not only lower-ranked pages that are getting involved. The number one position is also seeing a huge traffic drop off. With the entry of AI Overviews, that essentially creates a new type of position zero that is placed above all the others, traditional ranking metrics will become less useful.

2. Surge in Zero‑Click Searches & Traffic Loss

With a lot of queries, individuals will simply get an answer and forget. No click. Since the proliferation of AI summaries, zero-click searches have increased tremendously. According to Forbes, approximately 60 percent of the searches at present show no clicks whatsoever, particularly in information-seeking queries.

So compared to the data, SimilarWeb reported that major news sites were down from 2.3 billion visits to 1.7 billion visits after the KPC blowup in mid-2024 to May 2025. In the same period, the Zero-click news queries increased by 12 percentage points to 69 percent.

This is one of the worst negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO since it violates the established search ecology. Publishers publish and Google indexes, the user searches and the publisher gets rewarded through traffic and advertisements. AI Overviews bypass this cycle because the content is consumed but the traffic does not go away.

The spillover effects have already started being evident across the industries Guides on how to do something, informational pages explaining definitions, and short questions and answers have suffered the most. In case the usability of your content is preconditional on the informational search, then you are under the fire.

3. Non‑Branded Queries Hit Hardest

Worse yet, be prepared to receive, in case your content attacks non-branded informational searches negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO. Now, branded keywords are only about 4.8% in AI Overviews but when they are, CTR further increases by about 18.7%, as users know the brand and they trust it.

Non-branded terms, particularly when not in the top 3, even stand to lose up to ~27% CTR. And when you have no powerful branding, you are doubly open.

This generates a worrying trend as reputed and well-known brands with higher awareness will always become more visible, whereas smaller publishers and newcomers will be put at an ever more disadvantaged position to establish themselves organically. The adverse effects of AI overviews on SEO are highly disproportionate on small scale creators of content who are dependent on the long tail of the internet to focus on audience that does not matter enough to them.

4. Being #1 on SERP No Longer Equals Traffic

Position one used to mean golden. However, according to the surveys, CTR for #1 in March 2024 was 7.3% but when it comes to AI Overviews trigger results, it reduced to 2.6% in March 2025.

Regardless of whether you rank first or not, an AI Overview will have the capability to take away your clicks. This is a game changer in terms of SEO strategy as the old adage of wanting to be #1 does not necessarily mean success.

However, the impacts are not limited to the traffic levels. In case of failure in #1 position, what justification do you have to invest in SEO? What do you define as success? All these are questions that SEO practitioners are struggling to find the answers to with AI Overviews rolling out.

5. Risk of Misinformation, Hallucinations & Trust Erosion

AI Overviews are not flawless they sometimes oversimplify and even delusional when it comes to the misguiding information, particularly with the more complex or YMYL subjects. Filtering techniques are an ongoing project at Google, but in the initial versions raised question marks of dirty little summaries (e.g. advice to eat rocks or to pour glue on pizzas).

Due to that, Google is also being questioned (Chegg is suing), and content creators fear that the AI can selectively eat up the information without proper attribution.

This is perhaps one of the most pernicious of the adverse consequences of AI overviews on SEO: the loss of the confidence in truthful quality well-written material. As the AI systems extract snippets of information across various sites and provide summations of them, the context is lost, the shades disappear, and in some cases, errors are made.

The Hidden Costs: What Industry Reports Don’t Tell You

Although the majority of people are discussing the loss of traffic, negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO can be examined regarding the fields that are rather challenging to quantify, yet, no less harmful:

Brand Authority Dilution

When your goods, skills, and may we say hard-labor crafted content are fractured and repeated in an AI Overview, without any regard to due credit, your brand authority takes a hit. Users are left with the information, but it is not related to your competence. This destroys the relationship between your brand and your field of knowledge too, over a period of time.

Content ROI Deterioration

Production of quality content needs great investment in research, composition, directions, and optimization. In cases where the AI Overviews reap the literal essence of a value but fail to provide the relevant traffic comparatively, ROI of the content suffers a drastic fall. Due to this re-evaluation of content strategies, many publishers are revaluating their strategies.

Competitive Intelligence Loss

Understanding competitor strategies, user behaviour and market trends would traditionally be provided to you by ranking well on key keywords and therefore was made visible to you by the organic traffic trend as it was being done at that time. Since click frequency is cut with AI Overviews, this source of quality intelligence is diluted and strategic informed decisions are more difficult to make.

How to Combat the Negative Impacts of AI Overviews on SEO

We will be tactical negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO in our strategies as most of the articles do not demonstrate:

Optimize for AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) & GEO

Transform traditional SEO into considering your material as questions/answers to AI robots:

• Make info Q&A, step-by-step, end takeaways.
• Implement FAQ schema, how-to schema, and structured data that the AI can easily scrape your content.
• Write in a natural tone of conversation, something that AI would not be a fan of stiff corporate talk.

Boost E‑E‑A‑T (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust)

Google readers will trust your content, and such a trust makes AI Overviews more likely to cite it:

• Give the authoritative reference.
• Present credentials, authoring, background-checked data.
• Provide own statistics or examples-will give your page a unique appearance.

Focus on Long-Tail & Niche Queries

Such queries tend not to occasion AI Overviews and result in superior traffic:

• E.g. rather than AI Overviews SEO, focus on how to optimize content to target in 2025 AI Overviews.
• You could use a variety similar to the answer engine optimization guide, SEO when AI Overviews appear, or strategies to remain visible despite AI Overviews.

Leverage Branded Queries

Promote branded search expressions-when there are branded search expressions, CTR usually goes up:

• Include your brand in the titles or FAQs: “How MyBrand thinks about AI Overviews as a factor with regard to SEO.”
• Make use of internal anchors; use constant references to brand.

Sharpen Technical SEO & UX

AI summary bots prefer easy-on-the-eyes, rapidly loading, well-marked-up writing:

• Maximize the speed of pages, Mobile eagerness.
• Wooden markup, rich material, inserting clear headings, and alt text will help.

Monitor When AI Overviews Show

Monitor keywords. In case you see an AI Overview and it does not mention your site, learn how to structure your material in the form of parts more snippets, table, definitions, etc. Revise the phrases and titles.

Advanced Strategies for 2025 and Beyond

We are only touching the tip of the iceberg as we push our boundaries towards AI Overview, and as such, we need to understand what the downsides of AI overviews can be to SEO. Following are some of the strategies that progressive SEOs are initiating:

Content Clustering for AI Extraction

Write content clusters instead of creating articles that exist in a bubble. This makes more likely that you will be referenced in various health-related Overviews on AI and have a more significant topical authority.

Interactive Content Development

AI Overviews have their problems with interactivity in the form of calculators, tools, and dynamic content. Building a competitive moat to AI summarization can be achieved by investing in these formats.

Community and User-Generated Content

On the whole, AI Overviews are generally unable to imitate active communities, user review, and consequent community discussions. Developing these aspects into your content marketing will generate what people want to click on and AI cannot replicate it.

Frequently Asked Questions

“Will AI Overviews always kill my CTR?”

Not necessarily. It is query-dependent. Information searches experience significant decreasing (~15% to ~8% CTR according to Pew Analysis). However, there is still branded or unique content that continues to get clicks even when the AI Overviews are present.

“Can I still rank if AI Overviews appear for my keyword?”

Yup, but ranking itself is not enough. You ought to optimize on AEO & GEO to make your content easily extractible by the AI. Otherwise, Overviews are inclined to engage generic answers or competitors.

“How do I implement AEO without breaking SEO?”

Do not see AEO as something destructive. Organize your papers:
1.Conversational answers in the beginning,
2. Long-form is followed by details.
Write about real people first (the AI will pick it up naturally in the future as long as it is well formatted and has authority) by using schema (HowTo,FAQ).

“How long before AEO optimization shows results?”

Conclusion 

AI Overviews are turning the game: you may not be able to bring traffic with your rank only. The negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO are tangible, quantifiable, and expediting. Zero-click searches have become the norm in informational questions and the CTR became half or even less in many cases, especially on non-branded searches.
You should not only optimize but also to get into the best answer position, so become a fan of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). The areas that will remain visible even in situations when they are overwhelmed by AI Overviews are structured answers, F.A.Q schema, conversational voice, brand clarity, and deep long tails.

And lastly, track your keywords, when Overviews come in, edit phrasing to suit AI extraction patterns. However, the negative impacts of AI Overviews on SEO are not leaving, and you can mitigate those harms and come up with some opportunities with the proper strategy.
The SEO environment is continuing to change very fast and whoever reacts swiftly there would be able to sustain the competitiveness. The effects will soon reach your traffic, so you need to introduce these measures now.