Phone: 
The Impact of AI Overviews on SEO: How Smart Brands Turn a Threat into Competitive Opportunity
By Molly Owens The Impact of AI Overviews on SEO: How Smart Brands Turn a Threat into Competitive Opportunity
Over the last year, the introduction of AI Overviews in Google’s search engine results page (SERP for short) has launched the SEO industry into a new era. B2B brands are seeing drops of up to 30% in their click-through rates as users are now more likely to get the information they need directly from the SERP instead of navigating to the top sites to get answers.
With such a substantial impact on important SEO metrics, AI Overviews have led SEOs in many industries to begin updating their usual strategies to flourish in this new era. If brands don’t adapt their strategies quickly, they will see continued declines in performance.
To begin re-strategizing and regaining valuable traffic and conversions, brands need to understand what AI Overviews are, how they work, how to measure success on SERPs with AI Overviews, and how to plan content that helps the brand thrive in the age of AI.
Adapt your SEO strategy
Get Your AI Overview Impact Audit
What are AI Overviews? Understanding the new face of search
Over the last few decades, search engines have evolved from simple link directories into sophisticated answer engines powered by AI. Google’s AI Overview is an example of the latest evolution, where the search engine doesn’t just find information, but also synthesizes multiple sources and presents the answers directly in search results.
(Source: Google)
How AI Overviews work and where they appear
The AI Overviews feature uses generative AI to create its search summaries. Generative AI is able to learn patterns and understand the data that it’s trained on. It relies on sophisticated algorithms that interpret both content and context from multiple sources. In this case, the data comes from content on websites as well as elements of the code on the site such as structured data.
So as Google generates an AI Overview, it compiles and synthesizes information from several sources, then concisely summarizes it in the clearly-labeled AI Overview panel with sources cited on the right. The format of answers can vary especially between industries and query types, but it is often a mix of short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and relevant graphics.
According to a study by Advanced Web Ranking, AI Overviews appear for about 12% of queries and are most commonly displayed for queries with informational intent, like keywords starting with “how to” or “what is,” for example.
(Source: Advanced Web Ranking)
The most common industries that AI Overviews appear for, according to the study, are health and safety, technology, and finance. Branded queries, ecommerce, entertainment, and real estate industries show the least frequently, though this may change as Google continues to work AI into its functionality.
The difference between traditional featured snippets and AI Overviews
The longstanding featured snippet SERP feature still appears in about 18% of searches. This feature has a similar goal to the AI Overview — to answer the user’s query directly in the search results — but instead of summarizing several sources, it pulls an excerpt from a single source. …read more
Source:: Top Rank Blog
