Why Your Website Traffic Dropped After Google Rolled Out AI Overviews
Marketers and businesses (including some of our clients) have been subjected to a troubling new pattern in 2025 and 2026. Rankings appear stable, impressions remain flat or even rise, yet clicks and organic traffic decline.
In most cases, this drop is the result of a fundamental shift in how search results are presented and consumed.
AI Overviews Have Fundamentally Changed the Google Search Experience
Google’s AI Overviews are designed to resolve informational or research-oriented queries by generating an AI-written response that pulls from multiple sources. This consolidated answer appears before any traditional organic listings.
On desktop, particularly on small laptop monitors, AI Overviews often occupy the entire first screen, pushing organic results well below the fold.
On mobile, the effect is even more pronounced. AI Overviews can span multiple screen lengths, meaning users may never reach traditional listings unless they deliberately scroll.
This is a quality-of-life upgrade in the eyes of many searchers. Their question is answered immediately, without navigating to a website.
It’s a serious downgrade for businesses and marketers. In an increasing number of informational queries, service pages and blogs are contributing information to summaries but failing to generate a visit.
Why Rankings and Impressions Stay the Same While Clicks Drop
This is where confusion sets in for many businesses reviewing Search Console data and reports from their SEO provider.
Average position may remain unchanged because the page is still ranking in the same place within the organic results. Impressions may remain steady or even increase because the page is still being surfaced for relevant queries. What changes is user behavior.
Your page can receive an impression without receiving a visit. Some marketers may argue that this only creates the appearance of declining performance because rankings are unchanged or improving, but the truth is rankings are only a means to an end.
Businesses ultimately want traffic that can potentially lead to a conversion. Knowing that you’re “ranking better than ever” is little solace if there is no ROI.
Which Pages Are Affected First
Traffic losses tend to concentrate around specific types of content:
- Informational blog posts
- Educational explainers
- Early-stage research content
- What is, how does, and why does queries
For more than a decade, SEO and content professionals have fought over featured snippets real estate for those queries. But the game has changed.
Although featured snippets aren’t technically gone, AI Overviews have essentially cannibalized them in the results page. As of 2026, businesses receive far less visible credit for simply being one of many sources used by Google to generate an AI Overviews summary.
Which Pages Are Less Affected by Google AI Overviews
Not all organic content experiences the same decline. Pages that still perform relatively well include:
- Service and product pages
- Local intent searches (i.e., “roofer near me”)
- Branded and brand-adjacent queries
- Searches that require comparison, evaluation, or action
When a decision involves comparing specific products, pricing ranges, or evaluating unique local variables, users are more likely to click through rather than rely on a summarized answer.
Help Your SEO and Content Team by Sharing Specific, Real-World Information
There is one thing businesses still have that AI summaries cannot reliably reproduce: firsthand, real-world experience.
There are literally thousands of "What should I do after a car crash?" blogs on law firm websites. Being the 8,923rd law firm to publish one will not earn you traffic or citations unless you provide unique context.
Details such as realistic pricing ranges, timelines, step-by-step process explanations, common constraints, or trade-offs of specific products or services introduce substance that generic content may lack. These specifics signal that the information comes from direct experience, which is a strong authority indicator.
While this does not guarantee traffic or prevent AI summaries from appearing, it does increase the likelihood that:
- Content is viewed as authoritative rather than generic
- Pages stand out among similar articles in the same vertical
- Other sites reference or link to the content as a source
- Searchers see the business as credible when they do click through
In an environment where basic explanations are increasingly answered before a click occurs, specificity is one of the few remaining ways to create meaningful differentiation.
Is Organic Traffic Still Worth the Investment?
For many businesses, organic SEO is becoming less about maximizing clicks and more about maintaining visibility, credibility, and long-term demand capture.
Not all traffic loss from AI Overviews is recoverable, and it may not even be worth using your limited budget to chase AI citations.
Although it’s not a surefire, guaranteed solution in a rapidly evolving search landscape, pivoting to informational pages that function as authority signals may help preserve visibility.
Abandoning organic efforts entirely can weaken brand presence and increase reliance on
paid channels, which introduces its own cost and volatility. That
doesn’t mean your current search strategy should remain static.
Request a free audit from REV77 to find out which approach we recommend for your website.
