If your Google traffic fell over the past year while your rankings did not, you have probably met AI Overviews — the generated answer Google shows above the results.
What it is
An AI Overview is a short answer assembled from several sources, with links to them. For the user that is often enough and they open nothing. For your site it means impressions hold while clicks fall.
Which pages lose most
- Pages with a simple factual answer — 'what is', 'how much', 'when'. Exactly what Google can summarise most easily.
- General introductory articles with no viewpoint or data of their own.
- Content repeating what already exists in ten other places.
Which pages barely suffer
- Transactional pages. Someone searching 'website cost Varna' wants a supplier, not a summary.
- Pages with unique data — your prices, your projects, your results.
- Tools and calculators. An answer cannot replace something that has to be used — which is why our tools are their own pages.
- Local queries, where the decision is proximity and trust.
If all your page's value fits into three sentences, somebody will write them for you. If it does not, nothing can replace it.
What to do
- Split your pages into informational and transactional and see where traffic is actually falling. Search Console reports impressions and clicks separately — a click drop with steady impressions is the signature.
- Do not abandon informational content, but give it what a summary cannot have: specific numbers, your experience, examples from real projects.
- Invest in pages that require an action — calculators, configurators, checks.
- Make yourself a citable source. That is the GEO work.
- Strengthen the channels that do not go through a search engine — newsletter, repeat customers, referrals.
What not to do
Stop writing. Content is still how Google understands what you are about — including in order to cite you. What changed is which content is worth making, not whether any is.
Questions about AI Overviews
Can I opt out of AI Overviews?
Partially, with nosnippet or max-snippet tags. But the same tags also limit your ordinary result snippets, so for most sites the cost outweighs the benefit.
How do I know if it affects me?
In Search Console compare impressions and clicks over the last twelve months. Steady impressions with falling clicks is the signature.
Is a blog still worth writing?
Yes, but with a different measure of success. An article that earns citation, trust and an enquiry does its job even with fewer clicks than before.
What helps most right now?
Uniqueness. Your prices, your projects, your numbers — things that exist nowhere else and therefore cannot be summarised from another source.