If you’ve been thinking something isn’t quite right with your numbers, you may be right. Google AI Overviews have quietly changed search results in Perth and everywhere else, and many businesses are only now becoming aware of it.
You have spent years building up your organic rankings. You may hold first-page or even top-three positions for your main keywords, yet your traffic has dropped.
What is really happening here?
This article covers how to measure the impact and some practical responses.
Google first called it SGE (Search Generative Experience) and now brands it as AI Overviews. Instead of showing your website link at the top, Google now often displays an AI-generated summary that answers the user’s query on the results page itself.
If people get their answers without clicking through to your site, your traffic will drop. Research by the Pew Research Centre found that click-through rates declined by nearly 47% when AI Overviews appeared in search results.
Whether this is fair is beside the point. The question is what you can do about it.
First Things First: Are You Actually Being Cannibalised?
Before you call your Perth digital marketing agency to complain, let’s make sure AI Overviews are actually the cause.
The Diagnostic Checklist
Open Google search console and check the last six months of data. Look for queries where impressions remained stable but clicks fell. That’s where the problem lies.
Informational searches are the most heavily affected, especially ‘what is’, ‘how to’ and ‘why do’ questions. One study found that problem-solving queries introduce AI Overviews in 74% of results, while for question-based searches they appear around 60% of the time.
Google shows AI Overviews most often for:
- Complex multi-source questions
- How-to queries with steps
- Comparison searches
- Definitions and explanations
If your top pages address these types of questions, they may be at risk.
Reading the Numbers Carefully
Open your analytics and segment by landing page. Sort for traffic decline over the last quarter against the same period last year. Factor in seasonality. Don’t be alarmed because your Christmas content is not getting clicks in June.
What you are looking for will be those pages that have performed well historically but suddenly dropped off without any apparent reason. Rule out other causes first, such as an algorithm update or a competitor outranking you.
Compare your CTRs from Search Console with industry benchmarks for your positions. If you’re ranking in position two but getting a CTR that looks more like position five or six, AI Overviews are likely taking clicks.
Why Some Businesses Get Hit Harder Than Others
Not every business is affected equally. Educational sites tend to be hit hardest. Recipe sites are a good example: AI Overviews draw on their content, and the original source loses the click.
Service businesses with how-to or troubleshooting content are most at risk. If your SEO strategy was based on using educational content as a top-of-funnel attraction, you are likely to feel this change more than others.
Businesses that rely on ‘near me’ searches, and e-commerce sites that rely on transactional queries, are better protected. Google understands that individuals searching for “plumber near me” prefer to call a service provider rather than read an AI-generated summary.
Measuring the Real Impact
To respond well, you need to put a number on the problem. “I feel like my traffic is down” is not enough to plan with.
Set Up Proper Tracking
Start with the key Google Search Console metrics. Impressions are the number of times any URL from your site appeared in search results viewed by a user.
Track the total impressions versus the total clicks over time. Plot this on a graph and look for a widening gap between the two lines. That gap represents people who see you in search results but don’t click through.
Click-through rates vary by type of query. Group your queries into three categories: informational, navigational, and transactional. Watch how the click-through rate for each category trends over time. This will show you which part of your content strategy is most impacted.
Position changes vs traffic changes. This is the big one. If positions are stable or even improving while traffic continues to decline, there’s your answer.
The Before and After Analysis
Here’s a practical way to see what’s going on. Pick your top 20 most important keywords.
For each one, record:
- Your current ranking position
- Your CTR for that keyword
- The search volume
- Whether AI Overviews appear for that query
Get a baseline of what’s happening right now so you can measure exactly how much the appearance of AI Overviews is impacting your actual traffic instead of just hypothetical traffic.
A modest drop in overall traffic can hide much larger falls in certain categories of queries. The detail matters, particularly when you’re planning a response.
Winning Back Those Lost Clicks (Or Finding New Ones)
Now for the practical steps you can take.
Strategy One: Get Better at What You Already Do
AI Overviews pull from existing search results. If your content is thorough and genuinely helpful, Google’s AI will likely reference it. Sites cited in AI Overviews often see brand recognition increase even if direct clicks decrease.
Make your content citation-worthy. Use structured data. Answer questions fully. Include statistics and expert quotes. Aim to make your website a source that AI Overviews cite.
Strategy Two: Target Different Keywords
If informational queries are losing traffic, adjust your focus. Transactional keywords, local searches, and long-tail commercial queries still get clicks because AI Overviews do not fully satisfy intent.
A digital marketing team that understands search intent can help you work out which keywords are less affected by AI Overviews and which ones are mainly feeding Google’s summaries.
Strategy Three: Own Your Brand
Branded searches are protected from AI Overview cannibalisation. Brand building matters more than ever. Social media marketing, email campaigns, and traditional advertising make your brand the one people search for directly.
Strategy Four: Diversify Your Traffic
It is risky to depend only on organic traffic now. Google Ads is another option. You will be paying for clicks that used to come free through organic results, but the clicks are still coming.
Email marketing keeps you top of mind with previous visitors. The businesses adapting best are not fighting AI Overviews. They have built systems that work no matter how Google chooses to display results.
Strategy Five: Create Content AI Can’t Replicate
AI Overviews struggle with original research, original case studies, personal experiences, very recent news, local insights and multimedia content like videos and calculators.
If you’re repeating existing information, you’re competing with AI. While AI-generated content has its place in SEO strategies, the key is creating genuinely original value: something AI can reference but not replace.
Adapting to Change
The rules of SEO have changed, and they will keep changing.
What worked so well in 2020 may not work that well now. Google will continue to prioritise its own interests, and we must adapt accordingly.
Some businesses will stick with the old approach and watch their traffic decline. Others will evolve and find new ways to thrive. Which group you end up in depends on how quickly you spot what’s happening and change course.
Changing course does not mean abandoning SEO. Organic search still delivers a lot of value. But it does mean getting smarter about which aspects you invest in.
What This Means for Your Business Moving Forward
For now, focus on these steps.
First, get actual data as to whether AI Overviews are affecting you. Measure it carefully. You cannot fix what has not been accurately diagnosed.
Second, audit your content strategy. Which ones are vulnerable? Which ones are protected? In which areas are you creating real value rather than simply contributing content to the AI system?
Third, diversify. If 80 percent of your traffic comes from organic searches, that’s a liability now. Build alternative channels and create content that’s hard for AI to summarise.
Fourth, consider if you need professional help. Having a digital agency working on these challenges across multiple clients means they’re seeing patterns and solutions you might not be seeing.
The Bottom Line
AI Overviews are not going anywhere. Fighting them or denying they are a problem is a poor strategy.
What you can do is measure their impact accurately, understand your vulnerabilities, and adapt accordingly. Some clicks are truly gone. Others require different strategies to reclaim.
The businesses that will come out ahead are not the ones complaining about Google. They’re the ones who saw the change and actually did something about it.
Where does your business sit right now? Are you measuring this accurately? Do you know which pages are affected and by how much? Do you have a plan in place, or are you anticipating that things will return to normal on their own?
This is the new normal, and it pays to plan for it.
If you’re unsure where to begin, it may help to talk with an experienced professional. Getting some expert eyes on your specific situation might be the difference between losing ground and actually adapting successfully.
