What is happening to traffic

AI Overviews are short answers Google generates above the regular results. There is also AI Mode, a separate conversational search mode. In both cases people often get an answer without visiting a website.

The effect is easy to spot in Search Console: impressions grow or hold, rankings stay the same, yet clicks drop. That is not necessarily a problem with your site; Google now answers part of the questions itself.

How strong the effect is

Numbers vary a lot between studies. The most reliable data comes from a randomized experiment with 1,065 users in the US, reported by Search Engine Journal: on searches with AI Overviews, organic clicks fell by 38%. The paper has not been peer reviewed yet, but other studies also show a noticeable drop.

Informational searches ("how to", "what is", "how long") suffer most. Searches with an intent to buy or book ("washing machine repair Kyiv", "buy a fitness machine") are affected less.

How to get into the AI answer

  • Answer the question at the top of the page: 2-3 sentences that can be quoted without context.
  • Be specific: timelines, "from" prices, steps, tool names, real examples.
  • Create a separate page for each service instead of one page about everything.
  • Add a Q&A block and schema.org markup (FAQ, services, organization).
  • Show who the author is and why they can be trusted: experience, certificates, case studies.
  • Do not block search bots, and make sure the site is indexed not only in Google but in Bing too.
  • Keep business details identical on your site, Google Maps and social media.

How to measure results

Search Console does not separate clicks from AI answers from regular ones, so look at the whole picture:

  • Search Console: impressions and clicks over time for key pages.
  • GA4: visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com.
  • Leads: how many inquiries come from organic search, not just how many visits.
  • Manual check: ask an AI a question your business should answer and see whether it mentions you.

An example from my work

For the Kinezis store we did not run ads. Instead we added short answers to pages and FAQ markup, and we publish articles regularly. In 3 months the site got 360 impressions in Google's generative answers, as the Search Console report shows.

What to do if traffic has already dropped

  1. Find pages where impressions are stable but clicks fell: usually informational articles.
  2. Add a short answer at the top and an FAQ block to them.
  3. Add a logical link from those articles to a service page.
  4. Focus on pages for searches with an intent to order: AI affects them less, and they bring more leads.

FAQ

Can I turn off AI Overviews for my site?

Not completely without losing regular results. You can limit the snippets Google shows, but the site usually loses visibility. It is better to work on being cited.

Does SEO still make sense?

Yes. AI answers are built from pages the search engine has already found and evaluated. Without SEO, the AI has nowhere to take your content from.

How long until a site starts appearing in AI answers?

Usually a few months of regular work. It depends on competition in the niche, page quality and how often the site is updated.

Sources