AI Overviews Are Changing Google Search: Clicks Down 30%, Visibility Up—Now What?

Google’s AI Overviews have been live for just over a year—and the impact is no longer theoretical. Search impressions on Google have surged by 49% and click-through rates (CTR) have plummeted by 30%. This marks one of the most dramatic behavioral shifts in search in over a decade.

Visibility Has Grown—But Clicks Are Vanishing

For years, SEO strategies were built around one core metric: getting users to click. But AI Overviews—a feature that displays AI-generated summaries directly in the results—have disrupted that model. More people are searching, but fewer are clicking through.

• Impressions: Search impressions rose 49% year-over-year

• Click-Through Rate: Down 30% year-over-year

• #1 Organic Result CTR: Dropped from 7.3% to 2.6% in one year

• Zero-click searches: Now estimated at nearly 60% of all queries

The Rise of “Pre-Click” SEO: From Ranking to Recommendation

AGNT supports this new layer of search by meeting users at the point of arrival—after their questions have already been answered in Google’s AI Overview. Because it’s trained on your brand’s language and knowledge base, AGNT ensures that when users visit your site, they experience a seamless extension of what they already saw in search. This consistency helps reinforce trust and capture engagement, even when traditional clicks are in decline.

BrightEdge research indicates a shift in value from top-ranking links to cited content within AI Overviews:

• 400% increase in citations from positions 21–30

• 200% increase in citations from positions 31–100

• 89% of citations now come from beyond the top 10 organic results

This suggests that well-structured, relevant content—even if not ranked on the first page—can now command meaningful visibility.

Search Behavior Is Getting More Complex

Users are engaging in more sophisticated searches. Over the past year, queries with eight or more words have increased sevenfold, and there has been a 48% growth in technical language used in searches. At the same time, comparison-based searches—such as "best laptop for travel" or "X vs Y"—have dropped by over 60%.

Industry Impact: Who’s Winning (and Who’s Not)

Industry	AIO Query Coverage (May 2025)
Healthcare	~90%
Education	~90%
B2B Tech	70% (up from 40%)
Insurance	63% (up from 17%)
Entertainment	37% (up from 2%)
Ecommerce	4% (down from 29%)

Industries that provide structured, evergreen, and information-dense content—like healthcare, education, and B2B tech—have seen the greatest inclusion in AI Overviews. In contrast, ecommerce visibility has declined significantly, likely due to concerns around accuracy and monetization in AI-generated product recommendations.

What This Means for Marketers: Less Clicks, Higher Stakes

With fewer clicks, every visitor is more valuable. This shift has increased the importance of on-site engagement tools that can convert attention into action. AGNT, a brand-trained AI chat system, is designed specifically for this moment—able to engage users directly, qualify intent, and provide accurate responses without requiring human reps. As traditional search drives fewer visits, systems like AGNT help ensure the traffic you do receive is meaningfully captured and converted.

Strategic Recommendations

AGNT supports this shift by acting as a first responder for the users who make it to your site. Its ability to handle long-tail queries, technical vocabulary, and structured Q&A formats makes it especially well-suited to environments where AI Overviews dominate the search experience.

In the age of generative search, traditional SEO strategies must evolve:

• Focus on getting cited in AI Overviews, not just ranked in organic results

• Structure content to clearly answer specific, high-intent queries

• Prioritize technical depth and topical authority

• Monitor your visibility in generative results using AI-aware SEO tools

Final Thought: Search Is Growing—But It’s Also Changing

AGNT is part of the infrastructure that adapts to this change. In a world where fewer users are clicking but more are searching, brands need intelligent, AI-aligned tools embedded in their digital experience—not just to capture traffic, but to validate their credibility when they are mentioned by AI-driven systems like Google’s Overviews.

Google remains the world’s most powerful discovery engine, but how it delivers results is being redefined. As AI-generated summaries take up more space and attention, marketers must shift from a traffic-centric mindset to a presence-centric one.

Search today is about earning credibility within the AI layer. Success comes not from being clicked, but from being trusted enough to be quoted—before the user ever decides to leave the results page.