What AI Overviews Mean for SEO and Website Traffic

If you’re worried about what AI overviews mean for SEO, let me remind you of the featured snippet panic circa 2017. Do you remember how that turned out? At first, bloggers and SEOs balked at these short summaries at the top of the Google SERPs because they feared they would steal all our traffic. However, we ultimately adapted and optimized the content to be featured. I believe the same will apply to AI overviews. I mean, it’s already happening: the internet is now full of the latest advice on how to get cited in AI reviews (including this article).

I wrote this guide for SEO and marketing leaders looking for practical frameworks to overcome declining clicks and optimize content for Google AI Overviews. Find out what triggers an AI overview, how AIOs are changing SEO playbooks, and where AI overview optimization fits into an existing SEO program. I will also include lots of research and examples.

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A 2018 Reddit post about how featured snippets could “destroy the regular internet.”

A 2023 Facebook post from a blogger praising featured snippets and explaining how to capture them

Table of contents

What are AI Overviews?

AI Summaries are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of the Google search results page and provide a direct answer to your query synthesized from multiple websites. There may be a few images, links, and a “See More” button that you can click for more details. You can also click on the cited sources to read these web pages.

Here’s an example AI overview displaying the HubSpot blog. Note that HubSpot is featured four sometimes above the fold: as two inline quotes within the summary of the AI ​​overview, as a clickable excerpt to the right of the summary, And as the first blue link in the traditional search results below. Winning the AIO and ranking first means a brand can multiply the space it takes up in Google’s new SERP design.

AI Mode, on the other hand, is the full Google Search AI chatbot experience. You can access this by clicking on the AI ​​Mode tab at the top of Google. Unlike the one-shot nature of AI Overview, AI mode allows you to continue the conversation in multiple rounds, similar to ChatGPT or Claude. The rest of this article focuses specifically on AI overviews.

Importantly, the links that appear as sources in an AI overview do not always overlap with the top 10 results in the SERP. This means that your website can rank number one on Google Despite it are overlooked for an AI overview. Actually, a Semrush study of 200,000 AI overviews found that the number one search result in AIO only appeared 34% of the time on mobile and 46% of the time on desktop.

Because AI digests aim to answer the query immediately and directly, searchers often don’t need to scroll or click further to get their answer. Your request will be fulfilled immediately. As you can imagine, this can have a devastating impact on click-through rates (CTR) and website traffic.

What AI Overviews Mean for SEO

AI overviews correlate with lower click-through rates and higher zero-click searches, meaning you can expect less organic traffic from Google. For searches that display AI overviews, average outbound organic clicks fell by 38% and zero-click searches increased from 54% to 72%, a study found Working paper published in April 2026 by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University.

And AI overviews are increasingly becoming the norm: in February 2026, they were reported to be triggered on nearly half (48%) of tracked queries BrightEdge. And broken down by industry, that rate could be even higher: AI overviews were triggered in 84% of the 1,000 B2B queries analyzed by the AEO agency Fan out.

According to our own data, HubSpot’s organic customer traffic was down 27% year-over-year globally in February 2026 (although I don’t know how much, if any, of that was due to Google AI Overviews). But I will say this: If you’re seeing a continued decline in traffic, you’re definitely not alone.

So what do AI overviews mean for SEO?

• Success metrics must change. With the rise of zero-click searches, clicks are a poor measure of success. Now that’s what it’s about Influence Buyers even if they never click through to your website. Instead of worrying about keyword optimization, positions and traffic, focus on brand visibility score, mentions and citations.
• Traditional SEO is still important. AI overviews are heavily influenced by the SEO fundamentals you already know: technical SEO, quality content, and topic authority. Finally, Google explained it that “AI Overviews use a customized Gemini model that works with our existing search systems.” Ranking well in Google’s SERP will help you gain AI insights (although this is not guaranteed).
• Adding AEO is essential. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is separate from, but complementary to, SEO. Some AEO tactics have no SEO equivalent. For example, SEO has historically been optimized for ranking on specific keywords, while AEO focuses on the thematic breadth of the conversational fanout queries that response engines generate behind the scenes. And while SEO focuses primarily on driving traffic to your website, AEO relies heavily on off-site presence – building entity signals through authentic mentions on platforms like Reddit, YouTube, and industry publications – so your brand shows up in AI responses even if no one clicks on it.

What triggers an AI overview?

Not every search query triggers an AI overview in Google search. Here’s what we know about what triggers an AI overview based on large-scale studies of Ahrefs And Semrush.

1. Keywords with informational intent

Most AI overviews are based on informational intent keywords (from top-of-funnel users who just want to learn), but according to the latest SEMrush data, AIOs have moved down the funnel over the past year. Semrushs Analysis of more than 10 million keywords found that the proportion of information queries that triggered AI overviews fell from 91.3% in January 2025 to 57.1% in October 2025. Over the course of 13 months:

• Commercial inquiries increased from 8.15% to 18.57%. These indicate that users in the middle to bottom of the funnel are considering a potential purchase.
• Transaction requests increased from 1.98% to 13.94%. This indicates users at the bottom of the funnel who want to make an immediate purchase.
• Navigation queries jumped from 0.84% ​​to 10.33%. These typically come from users Googling a name to get to a website.

Informational sites are still the most likely AIO targets, but the gap is closing quickly. Don’t assume that your comparison, pricing or brand pages are safe from AIO interference, because increasingly that is not the case.

2. Questions, especially those beginning with “What,” “How,” and “Is.”

Ahrefs found that 57.9% of all questions triggered an AIO. Additionally, Semrush found that among the question keywords that triggered AI overviews in its sample, those beginning with “what,” “how,” and “is” were the most common.

3. Questions about science and people & society

According to Ahrefs and SEMrush, science and people and society are consistently among the industries most likely to trigger an AI review. Ahrefs found that 43.6% of science queries and 43.0% of health queries triggered an AIO – more than double the baseline of 21% for all keywords. Semrush’s analysis of November 2025 data ranked science, computing and electronics, and people and society among the most frequently cited industries.

4. Long queries (7+ words)

The longer a query, the more likely an AI summary is to appear. According to Ahrefs data, 46 percent of searches with seven or more words trigger an AI overview. The research also found that the likelihood of an AIO occurring increases gradually as query length increases, starting at 9.5% for one word and reaching a maximum of 46.4% for more than 7 words.

5. Non-branded requests

Ahrefs found that non-brand searches are 1.9 times more likely to trigger an AIO than brand-related searches (24.9% vs. 13.1%). Here’s an example: When I enter the non-branded search query “calorie tracking app”, I get this AIO:

But when I enter the brand query “MacroFactor” I don’t get any AIO at all. Instead I get MacroFactor’s website.

This makes sense when you think about intent (which we’ve already talked about): someone typing in “MacroFactor” likely has navigational intent – they’re trying to get to that particular brand’s website. But someone who types in “calorie tracking app” likely has an informational or perhaps even commercial intent – ​​they’re trying to get more information about an app and/or they’re considering purchasing it.

Overall, users are far less likely to click on links when an AI overview is displayed for a search query. This means that the goal now is to get mentioned in the AI ​​overview to gain as much visibility and traffic as possible. In the next section, you’ll learn how to do exactly that.

How to get cited in Google AI overviews

Let’s start with the bare minimum, without which you won’t be able to appear in AI overviews or Google searches at all:

• Your website must not block GoogleBot, Google’s crawler.
• Your content must not violate Google’s policies.
• The page should load (return an HTTP 200 success code, as opposed to, for example, a 404 error).

Google insists that there are no further technical requirements beyond those listed above to be considered for an AI overview. However, what the search giant does not sharing explicitly is how to optimize for AI overviews (i.e. increase your chances of being selected for an AIO).

To do this, we need to draw on industry experiments and best practices for AI search content. Most of the evidence below is based on the actual analysis of thousands of AI citation data points reported in HubSpot’s AEO booth 2026. I will also cite further research from the AEO agency Fan Out report mentioned earlier.

1. Focus on publishing blog content.

According to HubSpot’s State of AEO 2026, blog posts/informational articles are the most cited for AI overviews out of eight content types, with a citation rate of 42%. The least cited content types in AI overviews are news (not always breaking articles) at 5% and PR at 6%.

Based on the other content types analyzed in the report and what we already know about what triggers AI overviews, this makes sense: 57.1% of queries that trigger AIOs are informational, and compared to other content types – such as comparisons geared towards commercial intent favored by ChatGPT – blog posts are highly informative. So if you want to specifically attract AIOs, blog posts should be your focus.

2. Optimize your titles.

With eight cover patterns, “What’s (X)” is the frontrunner for AI overviews, while “Best (X)” lists and guides also work well. Including year in H1s and meta titles also correlates with higher citation rates in AIOs.

Ideal title for the AI ​​overview: “What is the best website builder for beginners in 2026?”

Not ideal title for the AI ​​overview: “The Complete Guide to Building Websites for Beginners”

3. Add FAQ sections to your pages.

According to AEO 2026, pages with FAQ sections are more likely to be cited in AI overviews. Adding schema markup (a type of structured data that you add as code snippets) to these FAQ sections correlates with higher citations in Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity. However, let me be clear: this is not the case with AI overviews require Schema markup.

Below is what a good FAQ section looks like, courtesy of HubSpot’s Content Hub Pricing Guide. Note the descriptive H2 heading (“Frequently Asked Questions About Content Hub Pricing”) and the questions formatted as H3 – the State of AEO report found that this combination could provide a citation boost.

4. Create EEAT signals on every page.

AI Overview is one of the fastest responding engines to EEAT signals compared to all other response engines analyzed in the State of AEO report. This makes sense considering that the EEAT framework comes from Google.

Specifically, the State of AEO found that the following page elements are associated with an increase in AI citations (so adding these elements to your content could help you get cited in more AIOs):

• Outbound links (especially applies to AIOs and Gemini)
• Statistics and data (especially applies to AIOs and ChatGPT)
• Author biography on the page (slightly more citation impact than the author’s name alone)
• A visible one “Last updated” date. (a stronger citation predictor than original publication date)

Let’s look at a great example of incorporating EEAT signals into a page from NerdWallet, a company identified in State of AEO’s analysis as one of the most cited B2C brands in its dataset. NerdWallet wins the AIO for the highly competitive search query “how to track expenses,” showing up not once, but twice.

Now let’s click through the blog post and see how NerdWallet captures EEAT signals on the site. Firstly, there is an author line which, when hovered, triggers a popup with the author’s bio (the author’s bio is also available at the end of the article). There are a wealth of credibility signals in this biography: the author’s years of experience, areas of expertise, and even the publications in which she was published. Additionally, the page clearly shows when the post was last updated.

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5. Apply traditional SEO principles too.

And last but not least, our old friend is SEO. No, it didn’t go anywhere. In fact, a strong SEO foundation is essential to building a successful AEO program – and predictions from SEO experts point to the same overlap between traditional ranking and AI visibility.

I spoke to Elie BerrebyHead of SEO and AI search Adoramawhich was recognized by Similarweb as a “Top Overachiever” in AI Brand Visibility in Consumer Electronics in 2026. This means Adorama “ranks significantly higher for AI visibility than for brand search demand,” according to the statement. The Similarweb report. Berreby reiterated the interdependence of traditional search and AI overviews. “Of course, if you don’t optimize for Googlebot, you’re ignoring the entire Google ecosystem and will suffer in Gemini, AI Mode, and AI Overviews.”

According to the State of AEO report:

• HubSpot figured this out based on the data set Pages that rank high on Google are more likely to be cited in an AI overview than other answer machines.
• Pages that rank for more Google search terms and rank high in the SERPs are generally more likely to be cited by answer engines.
• With an ideal keyword range of 50+, AIO tied with Perplexity for the highest preferred number of keywords of any AI response engine in the data set (including Gemini, AI Mode, Copilot, ChatGPT, and SearchGPT).

Take away: If you want a page to win an AI overview, cover more subtopics and answer more subquestions in this one part than before.

Pro tip: Write a comprehensive article that is AIO worthy, AEO strategist Kaleigh Moore recommends owning the topic by thinking holistically about the questions your buyers might ask. “How do we think about the current responsibility for our specific customer trying to solve this very specific problem?” Moore says. “What types of questions are they asking at this stage of the buyer’s journey? And how do we create content that proactively answers those questions?”

6. Create content for Reddit and YouTube and get featured there.

For an off-site strategy: YouTube is the first place marketers interested in appearing in more AI overviews should invest. 61 percent of YouTube quotes in Fan Out’s analysis came from AIOs. And since Google owns YouTube, it doesn’t surprise me at all that AIO prefers that platform the most. To put this favoritism in perspective, ChatGPT Plus cited the 1,000 queries in Fan Out’s dataset NO YouTube links at all.

Here are some of the Fan Out report’s insights and recommendations for optimizing YouTube for AEO:

• Comparisons and tutorials dominate. Therefore, create content in these categories. Specifically, Fan Out names problem solving, comparison and best-of as the three most important YouTube video types.
• 13.7% of YouTube quotes had timestamps, so Fan Out recommends adding chapter markers and timestamps to your videos.
• Optimize your video descriptions to help LLMs better understand what your video is about.

In my own experience, AIOs almost always cite a YouTube video for “how to” questions, be it “how to bake banana bread”:

Or “how to use a CRM for sales.”

Therefore, if you want more AIO quotes, I recommend creating YouTube content that targets “how to” queries or even collaborating with YouTube influencers to create content on behalf of your brand.

Reddit is the second best place to optimize for AIOs. In Fan Out’s analysis of over 33,000 AI citations in Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT Plus, Reddit emerged as the most cited off-site platform overall. However, Reddit was by far the most favored by AIO, which accounted for 51% of Reddit citations (significant, but still less than YouTube).

Fan-out data reveals this about Reddit:

• Posts are cited by AI engines far more often than comments.
• The three main content types are “Best of”, “Alternative Search” and “Review Opinion”.
• Engagement on a Reddit post is not nearly as important as the structure of the content and thematic relevance.

Here’s how Reddit can power AIOs in real life: I googled “best CRMs for small businesses” and HubSpot was recommended first, thanks to a Reddit post that HubSpot didn’t even create or comment on.

Measuring and diagnosing the impact on the AI ​​overview

Queries that led to this AI overviews are included in the overall performance report in Google Search Console, but they are aggregated with the rest of the SEO keywords, so you can’t filter them to display them only the metrics related to AIOs. To do this, you need to use a third-party tool. Here are two that I recommend.

Ahrefs brand radar

Best for: Answering the question: “What queries trigger AI overviews for this particular page or domain?”

Enter any URL and Ahrefs Brand Radar will show you the searches for which it was cited in an AI overview, including an estimated average monthly search volume for the query, the content of the AI ​​overview, and a list of cited domains included in that AIO.

If you already use Ahrefs for SEO research and tracking, it makes sense to also use Brand Radar for the AEO article.

Prices: Brand radar is included paid Ahrefs subscriptionswhich start at $129/month, but there are limits on the number of prompts you can track. Alternatively, Brand Radar is available as standalone tool starting at $199/month for an AI platform (e.g. AI Overviews/AI Mode), but does not include custom prompt tracking. To get custom solicitation tracking, you can purchase an add-on package.

Otterly

Best for: Answering the question: “Is this domain mentioned in AI overviews for the tracked prompts I care about?”

Otterly tracks prompts across six response engines, including Google AI Overviews, and displays both citation data and brand sentiment. I’ve tested Otterly a few times for other articles, including one about the best AEO rank trackers, and I really appreciate its ease of use and the fact that it’s a dedicated AEO tool (as opposed to doing both AEO and SEO). For brands focused on AI visibility, Otterly is more straightforward and affordable than Ahrefs Brand Radar.

Prices: Otterly Pricing starts at $29/month for 15 tracked prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot.

Frequently asked questions about AI overviews and SEO

Can you completely opt out of appearing in AI overviews?

No, you cannot specifically disable your website from appearing in AI overviews, but there is a workaround: Insert the “nosnippet” Robots meta tag Prevents pages from being included in snippets, not only for AI Overviews/AI Mode, but also for traditional Google search (e.g. it wouldn’t show up for a featured snippet).

• Page specific. Paste this code between and of the HTML code every single page that you do not want to appear in the AI ​​overviews.

  Code:

• Sitewide: If your site uses a template, you can add this code in the template header if you don’t want any of the pages using that template to appear in AI overviews:

  Code:

Pro tip: Do not confuse “nosnippet” with “noindex”. Adding the Robots meta tag “noindex” would prevent the affected pages from appearing in all Google search (not just AI overviews), so it is extreme, unwise and would harm the SEO of the affected pages.

On the other hand, as a searcher, you can’t really unsubscribe See AI overviews when you perform a search on Google. Here’s something Says Google in its help center: “AI Overviews are a core feature of Google Search, just like Knowledge Panels. Features cannot be disabled.” However, there are some workarounds:

1. Add “-ai” to the end of your query. This typically prevents AI overviews from appearing in your Google search results, but it is not guaranteed.
2. Click the “Web” tab filter at the top of the Google results page. This will only show you the web results, minus the AI ​​overviews.

How do you specifically track clicks from AI overviews?

It is currently not possible to reliably isolate clicks from AI overviews in Google Search Console. The best thing you can do right now is track AIO visibility. To do this, you will need a third-party tool. Ahrefs Brand Radar supports AI Overviews coverage and can help you find searches where AI Overviews mention your brand, cite your website, or both. From there, you can compare these visibility signals with GSC and analytics data to estimate the impact of AIOs on your organic traffic.

Should you create pages specifically for AI overviews?

No. Google says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations required to appear in AI overviews, and both Representatives from Google and Bing have warned against creating separate Markdown, JSON or bot versions of pages just for LLMs. Instead, focus on improving your existing content using the practices described above: clear definition-style answers, FAQ sections, EEAT signals, and a visible “last updated” date. This means optimizing both traditional SEO and AI search visibility at the same time, without having to create separate “AI only” pages.

How do you inform executives about the impact of AI Overview?

As you educate executives about the impact of AI insights on your website and business, reframe the challenge as an opportunity to gain mindshare and shift the metrics of success from clicks to visibility.

“Our website is losing traffic” is a bad call for any marketing organization. But ultimately, leadership is concerned with the bottom line: Does it make the company money or not? Clicks used to be a proxy for this, but that is no longer the case. It doesn’t matter if your website loses clicks if the business is actually gaining customers.

Studies show that LLM traffic converts more often than traditional Google traffic. Ahrefs found that its AI search traffic converts 23 times better than traffic from traditional organic search. Semrush concluded that after analyzing over 500 digital marketing and SEO topics, LLM visitors converted 4.4 times better than traditional organic search visitors.

Suggest a shift from traffic to share of voice; This is the metric that shows how your brand compares to the competition in AI visibility. Because sure, your website may be losing traffic, but there’s a good chance that competitors in your entire category are also losing traffic. So what matters is that when a potential customer asks about your category, whether they consult Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, or Perplexity, your brand is the one they see. Let leadership know that you are actually gaining mindshare by gaining more AI insights (even if your brand isn’t linked or your website isn’t clicked on).

Beyond AI Overviews: Track your visibility across all response engines

I hope you realize by now that AI synopses, like the previous featured snippets, represent a push-and-pull that has always existed between content creators and Google: the search engine is constantly changing its algorithm and SERP design, and what else can we do besides adapt? AI overviews could be an exciting opportunity to be the recommended answer to a potential customer’s question – even if they never click on your website.

However, I would caution against taking a myopic view of AEO and focusing only on AI overviews. They are fair one Interface in the AI ​​search landscape. You must remember that your brand may appear in the responses of other LLMs such as ChatGPT and Perplexity.

HubSpot AEO is a dedicated tool that tracks quotes in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini and provides recommendations to increase your visibility in the respective sites. Pricing starts at $50/month, with no additional HubSpot subscription required.

For teams already marketing in HubSpot, AEO is included in Marketing Hub Pro and Enterprise. The integrated version uses your CRM data to make suggestions about which prompts to track from day one, so tracking is based on your actual business context rather than general category guesses. And because the recommendations are linked to HubSpot’s content tools, you can take action on AEO insights within the same tool.

Conclusion: AI overviews are important, but they are only part of the larger AEO opportunity. Once you expand your view across all major response engines, you can stop guessing where your visibility is falling and start systematically closing those gaps.