What are Google AI Overviews (AIOs) and how they affect your website traffic.

Simple short introduction (for skimmers or if you are short of time):

Google is rolling out AI-generated summaries in Ireland called AI Overviews (AIOs). These appear at the very top of search results and often answer a user’s query without them ever clicking through to a website.

That means less organic traffic for your website, even if your site still “ranks.” well in Google or any search engine.

Here’s what you need to know and how we’re helping clients in construction, legal and financial sectors stay visible in this new search landscape, which is here to stay.

What are Google AIOs (AI Overviews)?

AI Overviews are machine generated answers that Google displays directly at the top in the search results pages. They summarise content from multiple websites using Large Language Models (LLMs), similar to ChatGPT. This is the new face or look of Google search. You will often see them appear as:

• Key takeaways
• Mini guides
•  Direct answers (above the traditional 10 “blue links”)

“AI Overviews aggregate data to give fast answers. SERP results like FAQs and organic listings are pushed further down the page.” – [Zak Averre, Anicca Digital]​

What does this mean for your organic website traffic?

According to a  well published 2024 study by Rand Fishkin at Sparktoro & Datos, only 37.4% of Google searches in the US now result in a click to the open web. Here in the Ireland and Europe, it’s even lower at 36% for us.

That means:

Many users never leave the search page at all because they get the answer on the Google results page

Your organic click through rate (CTR) to your website will drop, even if impressions or views go up

Snippets, video carousels and AIOs and Ads are all competing for attention above your website

“Impressions are up, but clicks are down. Users are getting their answers from AIOs.” – [Seer Interactive]​

How does this affect professional services firms in Ireland?

For construction, legal and financial firms: Your content may be summarised by Google without a visitor going to your website You may miss out on leads and engagement that would have come from a click. Local SEO, branded searches, and human expertise now matter more than ever, so do add some opinion and original content.
In the first three months of 2025 over 1.5 billion monthly users started seeing AI Overviews.  It does mean that people are getting answers without clicking thrugh to the website that created the answer.

Note and your homework for today

We used to say that you could hide a dead body on page 2 of Google, but now you could say the same about hiding a dead body in the lower half of page 1 of Google. So, being on page 1 is no longer a guarantee of success. Now you need to be in the top 3 or 4 organic results. Position 1 will get just under 30% of organic traffic and only 30% of search queries will end up in the organic results. If you do the maths, from 1000 searches for a term, 300 people get to organic results and at best 30% or 90 people will click on position 1 with about 45 clicking on position 2 or about 30 for position 3. Where are you ranking for your target key terms? Do you know? It is time you checked, so talk to your Marketing Team now. Otherwise you could be investing your budget and getting poor results.

What should you do now?

We’re helping clients adapt in a few smart ways:

1. Focus on E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) content performs better than AI generated fluff.

Human written content keeps people on the page 93% longer than AI content. Visitors are 3.6x more likely to engage with expert content​. You know this from your own browsing.

2. Target long tail terms & branded search

Instead of basic terms like “accountant Dublin”, aim for:

“Best tax-saving tips for construction firms Ireland”

“[Your Firm] reviews” or “[Your Name] financial planner Donnybrook”

3. Diversify your content types

AIOs don’t summarise videos or interactive tools as easily, so maybe do some videos for your YouTube channel

Add explainer videos, calculators, and FAQs to your site – something with added value for visitors that they will not get elsewhere

4. Update and merge old content

Combine thin or light posts with very little content in in-depth resources

Focus on uniqueness, not volume. Don’t give answers that you got somewhere else if you can avoid it. Or at least add some of your own ideas or opinions to make it different or ideally better.

5. Use AI as a tool, not a crutch

Use AI to speed up research, summaries and content ideas or do initial basic content creation

But make sure your final output is human, helpful and insightful – add value for any readers. Anything you get from AI is not original.

Real world impact

Here’s a chart from Tracy McDonald at Seer Interactive showing drop in Click Through Rate when AIOs appear in Search Engine Results Pages: https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/ctr-aio

Above is a graphic from a study in 2024 by Datos and Rand Fishkin at Sparktoro about what happens to clicks when AI Overviews show up. https://sparktoro.com/blog/2024-zero-click-search-study-for-every-1000-us-google-searches-only-374-clicks-go-to-the-open-web-in-the-eu-its-360/

Final word, don’t panic – prepare

AI in search isn’t the end, it’s another evolution. Google has been using AI and trying to surface better results for over a decade through algorithm updates, from Panda to Helpful Content. AIOs are just the next step. And for the user they do make sense. This is good for us all.

What stays the same?

Helpful, human content still wins

Strategy matters more than ever – have you got one?

SEO is not dead – but the rules have changed. It is smarter now, so it is very different. SEO is in Googles ‘Oxygen Tent’ and Google makes all the rules. SEO still depends on Googles rules. AI and new LLMs are a very small part of search, so we still want to focus on the lions share of the traffic which is at Google.

Make sure your website is ready. Run a few tests. Check your current ranking in an Incognito window.

‘SEO is not dead, it is in Googles oxygen tent’

Googles introduction of AI overviews certainly made traditional SEO more challenging, as did the Helpful Content Update. But people will still use Google search and most do. Anyone in the small minority who use Search GPT or any AI search tool will end up getting presented with the best answer to any given query, just like Google. Therefore the aim in SEO to proffer the best answer to any given query still stands. Create great content, present it well, make it as interesting as possible and Google will still rank it and deliver it. So will any AI search tools.
What is changing is the ability to manipulate Google or get pages to rank in the top 10 SERP results on page 1 of Google, which for the most part was a vanity metric anyway. Or was a way to drum up visitor numbers as a metric. Nowadays, you may need to be in the top 3 to turn up in AI overviews. At the end of the day people do not want traffic for traffic sake, so we still need to attract the ‘right’ traffic. And then use the content presented on the resulting page to convert a visitor to a lead or enquiry or buyer.
These evolutions in SEO will see irrelevant backlinks carry less and less value in the eyes of Google. Buying backlinks as a way to fool or manipulate Google is of less value and could even damage credibility, doing exactly the reverse of what was planned.
SEO is not dead, far from it, SEO is alive and well, protected in the ‘Oxygen Tent of Google’. Many good SEOs have felt frustrated by how Google would rank poor pages over good ones. But your time has come, where Google will get better at delivering the best response to a query with less and less black hat manipulation. ‘SEO is Dead, Long live SEO’.