Google’s search traffic is up, but users aren’t landing on websites.
Twelve months after Google embedded its AI-generated Overviews into search results, the system is pulling in more eyeballs but pushing fewer of them through. According to BrightEdge data, search impressions have jumped by 49% year-over-year. Click-through rates? Down by 30%.
That’s not a dip. That’s a fracture.
AI Overviews, introduced in May 2024, now crowd the top of many search results. Instead of a list of blue links, users get pre-written answers. They read summaries, sometimes in bullet form, sometimes in full paragraphs, right on the results page. The answers often cite external pages, but those citations don’t necessarily earn clicks.
And this isn’t a fringe change. It’s shifting the fundamentals of web visibility.
Sites are appearing in the summaries, but they’re buried beneath the experience. For marketers, that raises a hard question: What’s the value of an impression if it doesn’t convert?
BrightEdge’s yearlong analysis shows the mechanics behind the change:
Healthcare and education queries are now dominated by AI-generated answers, approaching 90% coverage. B2B tech content has climbed from 40% to over 70%. Insurance, once barely touched, is now seeing AI Overview involvement in nearly two-thirds of related searches.
The common thread: structured, evergreen, information-dense content. These sectors produce exactly the kind of source material that AI can digest and repackage.
E-commerce, meanwhile, is retreating. Retail-related queries that previously triggered summaries 29% of the time now do so in just 4% of cases. Product searches, it seems, still belong to the old web—likely due to the need for trust, visual input, and monetization models that aren’t yet compatible with AI-led curation.
For industries trying to maintain visibility, this is a problem that can't be solved by rankings alone. A top spot isn’t a guarantee of being seen.
That doesn’t mean keyword stuffing. It means anticipating complex queries and delivering layered but precise information. Being referenced by the AI has become just as important as being ranked by the algorithm.
Click-throughs are vanishing. Attention is sticking to the source.
And for content creators and site owners, the challenge is clear: the traffic funnel isn’t broken—it’s been reengineered.
Read next:
• Researchers Develop Method to Verify Presence Without Disclosing Precise Location Details
• Eric Schmidt: True AI Power Lies Beyond Language and Chatbots
Twelve months after Google embedded its AI-generated Overviews into search results, the system is pulling in more eyeballs but pushing fewer of them through. According to BrightEdge data, search impressions have jumped by 49% year-over-year. Click-through rates? Down by 30%.
That’s not a dip. That’s a fracture.
AI Overviews, introduced in May 2024, now crowd the top of many search results. Instead of a list of blue links, users get pre-written answers. They read summaries, sometimes in bullet form, sometimes in full paragraphs, right on the results page. The answers often cite external pages, but those citations don’t necessarily earn clicks.
And this isn’t a fringe change. It’s shifting the fundamentals of web visibility.
Brands Are Being Seen, But Not Visited
The old SEO game was simple: rank high, get traffic, monetize the visit. That equation no longer holds. In the AI-shaped search era, visibility doesn’t equal engagement.Sites are appearing in the summaries, but they’re buried beneath the experience. For marketers, that raises a hard question: What’s the value of an impression if it doesn’t convert?
BrightEdge’s yearlong analysis shows the mechanics behind the change:
- Long-form queries—eight words or more—now surface AI summaries seven times more often than they did last year.
- Searches using technical terms have surged by 48%, signaling a more sophisticated user base—and a search engine that’s comfortable handling jargon.
- Citations are no longer reserved for the top-ranked content. In fact, 89% of sources cited in AI Overviews come from beyond the top 100 organic results.
- Pages buried in positions 21–30 are being pulled into the summaries four times more frequently, while those in slots 31–100 have seen citation volume double.
Not All Industries Are Treated Equally
Some sectors are being fed into the AI system far more aggressively than others.Healthcare and education queries are now dominated by AI-generated answers, approaching 90% coverage. B2B tech content has climbed from 40% to over 70%. Insurance, once barely touched, is now seeing AI Overview involvement in nearly two-thirds of related searches.
The common thread: structured, evergreen, information-dense content. These sectors produce exactly the kind of source material that AI can digest and repackage.
E-commerce, meanwhile, is retreating. Retail-related queries that previously triggered summaries 29% of the time now do so in just 4% of cases. Product searches, it seems, still belong to the old web—likely due to the need for trust, visual input, and monetization models that aren’t yet compatible with AI-led curation.
AI Is Reshaping the SERP, Literally
AI Overviews are taking up more screen space than ever—over 1,000 pixels in height, on average. That means traditional organic results often appear well below the fold. It’s not uncommon now for users to scroll before they even see the first blue link.For industries trying to maintain visibility, this is a problem that can't be solved by rankings alone. A top spot isn’t a guarantee of being seen.
The Strategy Shift: From Ranking to Referencing
For marketers, the message is blunt: the path forward doesn’t lie in clinging to position. It lies in creating content that’s structured for AI digestion—answer-focused, semantically clear, and rich in context.That doesn’t mean keyword stuffing. It means anticipating complex queries and delivering layered but precise information. Being referenced by the AI has become just as important as being ranked by the algorithm.
The Bigger Picture
While other platforms like Perplexity and ChatGPT are nibbling at Google’s influence, the search giant remains dominant. If anything, the AI layer has widened its reach. People are searching more, writing longer queries, and expecting more complete answers. Google is delivering that—but not always in a way that sends people out to the web.Click-throughs are vanishing. Attention is sticking to the source.
And for content creators and site owners, the challenge is clear: the traffic funnel isn’t broken—it’s been reengineered.
Read next:
• Researchers Develop Method to Verify Presence Without Disclosing Precise Location Details
• Eric Schmidt: True AI Power Lies Beyond Language and Chatbots
