For the past 25 years, Google has been the leading search engine. Now, with generative AI, it has become an answer engine designed to give you direct answers to your questions without you having to lift a finger.
Google AI Overview is redefining the capabilities of search engines. You no longer need to sift through links and piece together the information you need. Simply ask, and you shall receive.
While AI Overviews is still in its infancy (May 2024), it’s caused major shifts in organic search traffic. Users want a quick answer, and visiting your website is no longer worth their time. With this rise of zero-click searches, we assess how AI Overviews will impact SEO.
What does Google AI do?
Google AI still has the same functionality as traditional search engines but now does the legwork for you. You can ask Google whatever is on your mind, and AI Overviews will generate a clear response with links to learn more. This information is sourced from multiple websites, so users don’t need to sift through themselves.
AI Overviews appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), appearing either before or after Google Ads, depending on the query. Google has experimented with different formats, including card-style blocks, mini-articles, tables or lists.
For example, when you search “how to do SEO”, you’ll receive a concise overview. There are link cards – the clickable links to websites AI Overview has sourced. You will also get a breakdown of what to do, what tools to use and where to go next.
Google AI Overview for a search query, “how to do SEO”.
A 2022 Semrush study found that 17.9% of users conduct another search after their initial one – often because they didn’t get a complete answer the first time.
AI Overviews improve the search experience by providing more comprehensive responses upfront. They allow users to ask complex questions in one go rather than refining their search multiple times, which means fewer searches and faster answers.
While this is great for the user, AI Overviews can lead to zero-click searches, which is driving a decline in organic traffic, especially for more informational content. You can learn more about zero-click searches below.
How does Google AI Overview work?
Google uses generative AI, which is a type of artificial intelligence that learns from large amounts of data to produce new content. A known example of this is ChatGPT. Every time you interact with search and these overviews, Google learns from them to develop and improve the generative AI experiences.
AI Overviews won’t appear for every search. Instead, Google only shows them when it determines that a generative AI response would be helpful. The content you see is generated using Google’s Gemini model. This language model includes advanced capabilities, including multimodality, planning and multi-step reasoning.
Why are AI Overviews important for SEO?
AI Overviews are another way your brand can appear on SERPs. SERP features, like featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes and knowledge panels, are enhanced search results that appear on page 1. If you land in these areas, you’ll increase search visibility and ultimately attract users. Part 2 of this series will cover how you can optimise your content for AI Overview.
But what about organic search as a whole? These SERP features are meant to draw users to your website. AI Overviews could do quite the opposite. Users now get all the information they need, meaning zero-click searches may rise.
Using Semrush Sensor, we can assess the volatility of Google SERPs to see which industries are susceptible to AI Overviews. In a single day (19th Feb 2025), we saw AI Overviews appear in the top 20 results only 2.17% of the time for desktop and 4.58% for mobile. The industries most impacted were the arts & entertainment, health and science.
While this percentage seems low, recent research has revealed that the organic click-through rate (CTR) decreases when AI Overviews appear. This research contradicts Google’s research last year, which indicated that AI summaries with links would, in fact, get more clicks than a traditional search.
Our thoughts
So, what do we think? Google AI is still evolving, but there’s still a lot of volatility. Research shows that AI Overviews are doing more harm than good, reducing visibility, traffic and engagement.
This doesn’t mean the end of SEO. As we’ve seen with all things Google, changes happen all the time. You have to adapt. It’s all or nothing. At Trio, we see AI development as a positive change, so much so that we’re developing our own AI.
Is Google AI Overview trustworthy?
Generative AI is constantly evolving and can often generate inaccurate or offensive information. As such, you need to take what AI Overview generates with a pinch of salt. It’s one of the many mistakes we see in web copy.
At the time of its US release, users reported cases when AI Overviews were getting mixed up – and wholly wrong. It recommended users eat one small rock a day and add glue to pizza so cheese sticks on better.
Since these strange results, the head of Google Search announced technical improvements were made and limited the inclusion of satirical or nonsensical content in responses.
So, the next time you refer to AI Overviews, always check for inaccuracies. It can often misinterpret information and hallucinate things that don’t exist.
Want to rank better on Google? Let our SEO experts do the legwork
Just like AI Overview, our SEO experts know exactly how to rank you on SERPs without you doing any of the hard work. We’ll handle your on-page and technical SEO, along with content writing optimised for search. We also specialise in building SEO-ready websites so you can hit the ground running.
Contact our team to learn more about SEO services today.
Want to rank better on Google? Let our SEO experts do the legwork
Just like AI Overview, our SEO experts know exactly how to rank you on SERPs without you doing any of the hard work. We’ll handle your on-page and technical SEO, along with content writing optimised for search. We also specialise in building SEO-ready websites so you can hit the ground running.
Contact our team to learn more about SEO services today.
