What are Google AI Overviews, and why did my blog traffic drop?

⏰ The 30-second version

• Google AI Overviews is the feature that summarizes the answer for you, right at the top of the results. Customers get their answer before they ever click a link.
• That's why link clicks are falling. It's the same directional change as "blog top rankings" searches dropping -39% in three months.
• The way out isn't turning the Overview off — it's becoming one of its sources. Tellingly, "cited in Google AI Overviews" has started appearing in autocomplete.
• The conditions for getting cited are the same as the GEO formula — content that answers the question directly, in cut-and-paste-able paragraphs.

What the AI Overview does: it answers before the click

When a customer searches "recommend a moisturizer," they used to see a list of ads and blog links. Now, above all of that, an AI Overview appears first — pulling the results together into something like, "The most frequently mentioned brands are ○○ and ○○."

For the customer, it's a nice feature. The problem is that a customer satisfied by that summary clicks the links below far less. The harder you've worked to rank a blog at the top, the more you feel it.