Are AI Overviews Stealing Your Clicks? What SEO and PPC Teams Should Do Next

If you manage SEO or PPC for a living, you’ve probably had this moment in the last six months: you pull up a search results page for one of your top-performing keywords, and the entire above-the-fold experience is an AI-generated answer. Your carefully optimized organic listing? Below the fold. Your paid ad? Pushed down or visually diminished next to a conversational summary that already gives the user what they were looking for.

Welcome to the AI Overviews era, where Google answers the question before anyone clicks anything.

The knee-jerk reaction in marketing departments has been predictable — panic from SEO teams watching click-through rates erode, confusion from PPC teams seeing cost-per-click climb while conversion rates stall, and executives asking both sides the same question: “What are we paying you for if Google just gives the answer away?”

But panic is the wrong response. What’s actually happening is more nuanced than “AI is stealing our clicks,” and the right strategy isn’t to fight AI Overviews — it’s to restructure your entire search program around how they’re changing user behavior.

At Brandastic, we run both SEO and PPC under one roof. That’s not a sales pitch — it’s the reason we spotted this problem early and started adapting before the data got ugly. When you manage organic and paid as integrated disciplines instead of siloed teams, you see patterns that specialists miss. And the pattern we’re seeing with AI Overviews is clear: brands that treat SEO and PPC as separate line items are getting squeezed from both sides. Brands that run them as a unified search strategy are finding new opportunities that didn’t exist a year ago.

Here’s what’s actually happening, what the data says, and exactly what your teams should do about it.

What AI Overviews Actually Changed

Google’s AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience) started rolling out broadly in mid-2024 and now appear across a growing share of search queries, especially informational and research-driven searches. They’re most prevalent on informational and research-intent queries — exactly the queries that used to drive top-of-funnel organic traffic.

Here’s what makes them different from featured snippets, which marketers had already learned to live with:

They’re Longer and More Comprehensive

Featured snippets pulled a paragraph or a list from a single source. AI Overviews synthesize information from multiple sources into a multi-paragraph, conversational answer. They don’t just give users a teaser — they often give them the complete answer, with follow-up suggestions and related topics built in.

They Push Everything Down

A featured snippet took up maybe 150 pixels of screen real estate. An AI Overview can consume 400-600 pixels — sometimes more when it includes expandable sections. On mobile, that can mean two or three full swipes before a user reaches the first organic result. Paid ads, which used to sit cleanly above organic results, now compete with an AI-generated answer that feels more authoritative than an ad.

They Change the Click Calculus

When a user reads a comprehensive AI Overview, their motivation to click through to any result — organic or paid — fundamentally changes. They’ve already gotten the “what.” Now they only click if they need the “how,” the “who,” or the “buy.” This shifts the entire search funnel downstream, compressing the research phase and changing which queries actually generate clicks.

The Data: How Bad Is It Really?

Let’s look at the numbers, because the reality is more nuanced than the “SEO is dead” headlines suggest.

Organic Click Impact

Multiple studies from Ahrefs, Semrush, and independent researchers show that queries triggering AI Overviews see a 20-40% reduction in organic click-through rates for the top three positions. That’s significant — but it’s not uniform. The impact varies dramatically by query type:

• Definitional queries (“What is a 1031 exchange?”) — Massive click loss, 40%+. The AI Overview fully answers the question.
• Comparison queries (“Shopify vs WooCommerce for small business”) — Moderate click loss, 20-30%. Users still want deeper analysis.
• Transactional queries (“buy standing desk under $500”) — Minimal click loss, under 10%. Users still need to actually purchase.
• Local queries (“best Italian restaurant Costa Mesa”) — Variable. AI Overviews often redirect to local pack results, creating a different flow rather than eliminating clicks entirely.

The takeaway: AI Overviews are devastating for informational content that was already borderline for conversion value. They’re much less damaging for content that serves users deeper in the funnel.

Paid Search Impact

The PPC side is less discussed but equally important. Data from WordStream and internal Brandastic campaign analysis reveals several trends:

• CPCs are rising on queries where AI Overviews appear, averaging 12-18% higher than equivalent non-AIO queries. Fewer ad slots + same advertiser competition = higher prices.
• Ad position matters more than ever. In some layouts, top ads may still appear above or near AI Overviews, making premium placement more valuable.  Position 2-4 ads get buried below the Overview, where click rates crater.
• Landing page quality still matters, and pages that provide deeper value beyond the AI Overview may be better positioned to convert paid traffic.

What SEO Teams Should Do Next

If you’re running organic search strategy, the AI Overviews shift requires real strategic changes — not just tactical tweaks.

1. Revalue Your Keyword Portfolio

Not all organic keywords are created equal anymore. You need to audit your entire keyword portfolio through an AI Overview lens:

• Queries where AI Overviews appear and fully answer the question — Deprioritize these for click-driven traffic goals. They still have value for brand visibility and AI citation, but expecting the same click volume is unrealistic.
• Queries where AI Overviews appear but leave gaps — These are opportunities. If the AI Overview covers the basics but does not address nuance, regional context, pricing, implementation or decision criteria, build content that fills those gaps.
• Queries where AI Overviews don’t appear — Protect these aggressively. They represent your most reliable organic traffic and will become more valuable as click-through rates compress elsewhere.

This kind of strategic prioritization is fundamental to modern SEO — understanding not just where you can rank, but where rankings still translate to meaningful traffic.

2. Optimize for AI Overview Citations

Here’s the opportunity hidden inside the threat: AI Overviews cite their sources. Those citation links appear within or directly below the Overview, and early data suggests they receive meaningful click-through — in some cases higher than traditional position #1 organic results. 

To earn citations:

• Structure content with clear, specific claims backed by data or original research. AI Overviews pull from content that makes definitive statements, not hedging generalities.
• Use structured data aggressively. FAQ schema, HowTo schema, and well-structured heading hierarchies make your content easier for Google’s AI to parse and cite.
• Cover subtopics comprehensively. AI Overviews synthesize from multiple sources. If your single page covers what three competitor pages cover separately, you’re more likely to be the synthesized source.
• Publish original data and perspectives. AI Overviews can’t cite original research that only exists on your site. This is your moat — proprietary data, original surveys, unique case studies, and expert analysis that no one else has.

3. Shift Content Strategy Toward Decision-Stage Topics

If informational top-of-funnel content is losing clicks to AI Overviews, the strategic response is to invest more heavily in content that serves users at the decision and action stages:

• Comparison and evaluation content — “Best CRM for Real Estate Teams: 2026 Comparison” serves users who’ve moved past the “what is a CRM” phase.
• Implementation and how-to guides — “How to Set Up Automated Follow-Ups in Salesforce” is too specific and procedural for AI Overviews to fully address.
• Case studies and results content — “How We Helped a Dallas Law Firm Increase Leads 340% in 8 Months” is original, specific, and gives users a reason to click through.
• Tools and calculations — AI Overviews cannot fully replicate interactive tools that require user inputs, calculations or personalized outputs. A mortgage calculator, a ROI estimator, a pricing configurator — these require a click.

4. Double Down on Brand Building

This might sound like a detour from SEO, but it’s not. As AI Overviews absorb more unbranded informational queries, branded search becomes a larger share of your reliable organic traffic. When someone types “Brandastic SEO services” instead of “SEO agency Orange County,” no AI Overview can intercept that intent.

Investing in brand awareness and recognition isn’t just a top-of-funnel play anymore — it’s an organic search survival strategy. Every branded search is a click that AI Overviews can’t steal.

What PPC Teams Should Do Next

Paid search strategy needs equally significant adjustments. Running the same campaigns you ran in 2024 against 2026’s AI Overview landscape is like bringing a road map to a GPS fight.

1. Restructure Bidding Around AI Overview Presence

Start segmenting your keyword lists by whether AI Overviews appear on those queries. You can check this manually or use tools like Semrush’s SERP feature tracking to identify AIO-triggered keywords at scale.

For keywords with AI Overviews:

• Bid more aggressively for position 1. The top ad slot, which appears above the AI Overview, is now dramatically more valuable than position 2+. The gap in click-through rate between position 1 and position 2 has widened from roughly 2x to 3-4x on AIO queries.
• Improve Quality Scores ruthlessly. Google’s Quality Score algorithm increasingly rewards landing pages that provide substantial value beyond what the AI Overview covers. Thin landing pages with a form and three bullet points won’t cut it anymore.
• Test ad copy that acknowledges the AI answer and offers something beyond it. “See the full comparison our clients use” or “Get the pricing breakdown AI can’t show you” — give users a reason to choose your ad over the free answer they just read.

2. Shift Budget Toward High-Intent, Low-AIO Keywords

AI Overviews appear less frequently on high-commercial-intent queries. Terms like “hire [service] [city],” “buy [product] online,” “[brand] pricing,” and “[product] free trial” are still largely AIO-free and convert at higher rates. Reallocating budget toward these terms often produces better ROI even at higher CPCs, because the click-to-conversion rate is stronger.

This is a basic pay-per-click strategy, but it’s more important than ever to execute it precisely.

3. Build Remarketing Into Everything

Here’s a pattern we’re seeing: users read the AI Overview, absorb the information, and then don’t click anything — not your ad, not an organic result. But they’ve now been exposed to the topic and may be further along the buying journey than they were 30 seconds ago. They just didn’t enter your funnel.

The fix is to build remarketing layers that capture these users elsewhere:

• YouTube remarketing — Users who searched but didn’t click often continue their research on YouTube. Running pre-roll or discovery ads on related YouTube content catches them in the next phase.
• Social retargeting — Display and social ads targeting users who searched for your category terms keep your brand visible even after the zero-click search.
• Branded search campaigns — After seeing AI Overviews mention your brand or your category, some users search your brand name directly. Make sure you’re capturing that branded demand with ads, especially if competitors are bidding on your brand terms.

4. Rethink Landing Page Strategy

When someone clicks through from a search result page that includes an AI Overview, they’ve already read a comprehensive summary. If your landing page just repeats the same surface-level information, you’ve wasted the click. The user bounces, your Quality Score drops, and your costs go up.

Post-AIO landing pages need to offer something the Overview couldn’t:

• Specific pricing or quotes — AI Overviews never include pricing. A landing page with transparent pricing or a quick-quote tool has immediate value.
• Personalized assessments — “See how this applies to your business” with an interactive tool or quick questionnaire.
• Social proof at scale — Real client results, specific case numbers, video testimonials. The AI Overview can say “reviews are positive.” Your landing page can show 50 specific five-star reviews with detailed stories.
• Immediate next steps — Clear, low-friction CTAs. Don’t make users hunt for the action you want them to take.

Building landing pages purpose-built for this new reality is one of the highest-ROI investments a PPC team can make right now.

The Integrated Approach: Why Silos Kill You Here

Here’s where this conversation gets real. Most companies run SEO and PPC as separate programs — different teams, different budgets, different KPIs, sometimes even different agencies. That structure was always suboptimal, but AI Overviews have made it actively dangerous.

Why? Because the strategic responses for SEO and PPC are deeply intertwined:

• SEO deprioritizes an informational keyword because AI Overviews killed the click-through rate. But PPC is still bidding on it because no one told them. Now you’re paying $4 per click for traffic you used to get for free — and the click quality has dropped because users already read the answer.
• PPC shifts budget to high-intent keywords, driving up competition and CPCs. Meanwhile, SEO could be ranking for those same terms organically, reducing the need for paid spend. But without coordination, both teams are chasing the same clicks and cannibalizing each other.
• SEO earns an AI Overview citation, which drives brand awareness. But PPC isn’t running branded campaigns to capture the downstream demand that citation creates. The awareness dissipates without conversion.

The integrated approach looks like this:

• Shared keyword intelligence — Both teams work from the same keyword universe, tagged by AI Overview presence, intent stage, and current ownership (organic rank, ad position, or both).
• Coordinated coverage decisions — For each keyword, decide whether to pursue it organically, through paid, or both — based on AI Overview dynamics, competitive landscape, and conversion economics.
• Unified attribution — Track the full journey from AI Overview impression through brand search through conversion. This requires attribution models that go beyond last-click, but the insights are invaluable.
• Shared content investment — Content created for SEO (blog posts, guides, case studies) can serve as landing page assets for PPC. Paid traffic data (search terms, conversion rates) can inform SEO content prioritization. The feedback loop is powerful when both teams actually share information.

This is exactly what a full-service digital marketing program should deliver — not two separate reports stitched together, but a single search strategy that deploys organic and paid resources intelligently against the same goals.

The Attribution Challenge (And How To Solve It)

One of the biggest practical problems with AI Overviews is measurement. Traditional attribution models weren’t built for a world where a user’s first meaningful interaction with your brand might be reading about you in an AI-generated summary they never clicked.

What Breaks

• Last-click attribution misses the AI Overview touchpoint entirely. The user reads about you in the Overview, Googles your brand name later, and the branded search gets all the credit.
• Click-through rate as a KPI becomes misleading. A declining CTR on informational queries might not mean your SEO is failing — it might mean AI Overviews are compressing clicks industry-wide while your brand still gets cited.
• PPC ROAS calculations get distorted when CPCs rise due to AI Overview compression but the assisted conversions from organic brand awareness aren’t factored in.

What to Do Instead

• Track branded search volume as a leading indicator. If your branded search is growing while your unbranded informational CTR is declining, you’re winning — the AI Overview is creating awareness that converts through branded queries.
• Implement cross-channel attribution. Use Google Analytics 4’s data-driven attribution or a dedicated tool like Triple Whale, Northbeam, or HubSpot’s multi-touch attribution to connect touchpoints across organic, paid, direct, and referral.
• Monitor AI Overview citations directly. Check whether your pages are being cited in AI Overviews for your target queries. Citation without clicks still has brand value — treat it like a digital billboard impression, not a failed SEO result.
• Survey your customers. Add “AI assistant” as a source option in your “how did you hear about us?” intake. The qualitative data will surprise you.

What This Means for Budget Conversations

CMOs and business owners are looking at declining organic click-through rates and asking whether SEO is worth the investment. They’re looking at rising CPCs and asking whether PPC budgets need to increase or decrease. These are fair questions, but they need to be answered with the full picture.

SEO investment should shift, not shrink. The channels producing value are changing — from pure click-driven traffic to AI citation visibility, brand authority, and decision-stage content. The work is different, but it’s not less valuable. Cutting SEO budget because informational clicks are declining is like closing your store because foot traffic dropped, while ignoring that your online orders doubled.

PPC investment should get smarter, not necessarily bigger. Reallocating from AIO-heavy informational keywords to high-intent commercial terms often produces better returns without increasing total spend. The budget might stay flat, but the allocation shifts significantly.

The real budget conversation is about integration. If you’re paying two separate agencies — one for SEO and one for PPC — you’re paying twice for coordination that probably isn’t happening. The strategic advantage belongs to teams (or agencies) that manage both disciplines together with shared data, shared strategy, and shared accountability.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Google AI Overviews?

Google AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results for many queries. They synthesize information from multiple web sources into a conversational answer, often providing users with comprehensive information before they scroll to traditional organic or paid results. They now appear across many informational and research-oriented searches, with prevalence varying by industry, query type and search intent.

Are AI Overviews reducing organic traffic?

Yes, for certain query types. Informational and definitional queries that trigger AI Overviews are seeing 20-40% reductions in organic click-through rates. However, commercial and transactional queries are much less affected. The impact varies significantly by industry and keyword intent, which is why a blanket “SEO is dying” narrative misses the nuance.

How do AI Overviews affect PPC campaigns?

AI Overviews push paid ads further down the page (except position 1, which odten stays above the Overview), reduce overall click-through rates, and increase CPCs by 12-18% on affected queries. They also change user behavior — people who read the Overview before clicking an ad arrive at landing pages with higher expectations and less patience for surface-level content. 

Can my website be cited in AI Overviews?

Yes. AI Overviews cite their source websites, and those citation links can drive meaningful traffic. To earn citations, focus on structured content with clear claims, comprehensive topic coverage, original data or research, and proper schema markup. Being cited in an AI Overview can actually outperform a traditional top-3 organic ranking for click-through rates.

Should I reduce my SEO budget because of AI Overviews?

No — but you should shift how that budget is allocated. Less investment in thin informational targeting queries AI Overviews fully answer, the more investment in decision-stage content, original research, brand authority, and AI citation optimization. The nature of valuable SEO work is changing, but the value of organic visibility remains strong. 

How should PPC strategy change for AI Overviews?

Bid more aggressively for position 1 on AIO-affected queries, shift budget toward high-intent keywords with lower AI Overview prevalence, invest in remarketing to capture zero-click searchers downstream, and rebuild landing pages to offer genuine value beyond what the Overview already provided. Segment your keywords list by AIO presence to apply different bidding strategies.

Why is integrating SEO and PPC important in the AI Overview era?

Because the strategic responses are interdependent. SEO keyword deprioritization should inform PPC keyword targeting. PPC conversion data should inform SEO content priorities. Brand awareness created by AI Overview citations should be captured through coordinated branded campaigns. Running these as separate, siloed programs creates blind spots, wasted spend, and missed opportunities that an integrated approach avoids. 

How do I measure success when AI Overviews reduce clicks?

Move beyond click-through rate as your primary KPI. Track branded search volume growth. AI Overview citation frequency, cross-channel conversion paths, and survey-based attribution. Use data-driven attribution models that account for multi-touch journeys. A declining CTR on informational queries paired with growing branded search and stable conversion volume often indicates your overall strategy is working — the funnel just changed shape. 

Brandastic is a full-service digital marketing agency with offices in Orange County, Los Angeles, and Austin. We run SEO and PPC as one integrated search strategy — not two separate reports. Talk to us about building a search program that works in the AI Overview era.