AI Overviews: what they mean for your traffic

An AI Overview takes clicks away from the searches it appears in, even when your ranking stays the same. In December 2025, Ahrefs found that a top-ranking result loses around 58 per cent of its clicks when an AI answer appears above it. Questions starting with what, how and why are hit hardest; searches with purchase intent and local searches are affected least. In Search Console, the pattern is falling clicks while impressions and rankings hold steady.

That is how an AI Overview typically shows up in the figures. Nothing crashes and no warning appears, so it is easy to miss.

We covered your visibility in AI answers in How to get seen when a machine writes the answer. Here, we turn to traffic: what overviews do to it, how to spot the impact and what you can influence.

An AI Overview is an answer Google writes at the top of its search results, with links to the sources it draws on. It is available in Sweden and in Swedish. According to Google, it cannot be turned off for an individual search, and a page needs the same qualities to be linked in an overview as it does to appear in regular results.

In my own test searches, overviews appear most often for what and how questions, and rarely when I search for a company name or a service plus a location.

It depends on what your visitors search for. In our study of 9,580 Swedish keywords related to digital services, which we report in How to get seen when a machine writes the answer, the differences were considerable:

• Questions (what, how, why): AI answers appeared for 36 per cent.
• Core industry terms: 7 per cent.
• Searches with purchase intent (agency, consultant, quote, price): 3 per cent.
• Local searches: 2 per cent.

A website that relies on questions is therefore much more exposed to AI answers than one that relies on searches with purchase intent. Start by finding out how many of your clicks come from informational queries.

Others have measured the impact on clicks. In December 2025, Ahrefs calculated that a top-ranking result loses around 58 per cent of its clicks when an AI answer appears above it, compared with 34.5 per cent in its earlier study. When AI answers launched in France in July 2026, Ahrefs tracked 963 domains. The most exposed saw their click-through rate drop by around 23 per cent in nine days, while those with little exposure stayed steady.

These are not our own figures, and the methods differ, but they point in the same direction: searches with AI answers are the ones losing clicks.

Search Console is all you need. No specialist software is required.

1. Filter for questions. Open Performance, add a query filter and select regex. Using ^(vad|hur|varför|när|vilken|vilka)\s gives you only searches that start with a question word.
2. Compare two periods of equal length, such as the last three months against the three before. Ideally, also compare with the same months last year so seasonal changes do not mislead you.
3. Look at clicks, impressions and average position. If clicks fall while impressions and rankings hold steady, that is the pattern you are looking for.
4. Do the same for searches with purchase intent, for example using (byrå|konsult|offert|pris|kostnad). If those clicks fall less, that supports the picture.
5. Check manually. Search for your ten most important questions in a private browsing window and see whether an overview appears and which pages it links to.

Do not draw conclusions from a single day. Impressions can fluctuate for reasons unrelated to AI, such as changes to how Google measures them. That can make your click-through rate look worse even when visits have not fallen, so look at the number of clicks first.

No. It depends on the value of the search.

Someone searching for "what is a requirements specification" rarely becomes a client that day. Someone searching for "agency for a new website" is already choosing a provider. If you lose clicks from the first group but keep the second, you have lost readers, not business.

That is why your reporting should track enquiries, not just visits. If informational visits fall but enquiries stay steady, it is mainly your traffic figure that has changed. If enquiries fall at the same rate, there is something worth investigating.

An overview links to a handful of sources. That brings fewer clicks than a top ranking used to, but more than being left out altogether. Here is what improves your chances:

• Put the answer first. Start the section with a one- or two-sentence answer.
• Use the question as a heading, phrased the way people actually ask it.
• Include facts that can stand alone: figures, definitions and steps that make sense without the surrounding context.
• Add frequently asked questions at the end of the page, with short answers.
• Name the author and include their job title.

More on this in How to get seen when a machine writes the answer.

AI answers handle definitions and short explanations well. They are less good at first-hand experience, original research, templates and tools that help people make decisions. Something visitors can download, use for calculations or copy gives them a reason to click through.

People who click through from an AI answer have already read a summary and want more. Take them to a page that picks up where the summary left off, with a clear next step: a template, a walkthrough or a way to get in touch.

Track enquiries, meetings and sign-ups, not just visits. Break visits down by page type so you can see where the impact is.

With nosnippet and max-snippet you can limit how much of a page Google can show. According to Google, these controls also apply to AI features. The trade-off is that you also lose visibility in regular snippets. For most businesses that want to be found, that is the wrong trade-off.

• Tricks to game the AI answer. There is no special markup that secures a place in an overview. According to Google, the same basic rules apply as for regular search.
• Longer articles covering the same ground. The answer needs to be clearer, and more words rarely achieve that.
• Waiting it out. Ahrefs’ two studies show that the impact has grown.

We measure how often AI answers appear in your searches and what that means for your traffic.

Find out more about our SEO work · Explore our AI solutions

• Google Search Central: AI features and your website
• Google Search Help: AI Overviews
• Ahrefs: AI Overviews reduce clicks, December 2025 update
• Ahrefs: AI Overviews and click-through rates in France, 2026
• Search Engine Roundtable, 2 November 2026: the AI report in Search Console
• Search Engine Roundtable, 2 November 2026: AI Overviews for brand searches in the right-hand column