Google’s AI Overviews Are Changing Search: What Marketers Need to Know

AIO is changing the game for digital teams.

For marketing and business development professionals, AI can be a blessing and a curse an opportunity to refresh your website.

Once upon a time, SEO was simple(ish). You optimized for organic clicks, earned visibility on page one, and watched new visitors flow into your site. That first click was your digital handshake.

But the search landscape is shifting. With Google’s AI Overviews (AIOs), users often get the answers they are looking for before they ever see your homepage.

Search Is No Longer About Links

AIOs are Google’s way of offering instant summaries. Instead of scanning a list of blue links, searchers now get a conversational, AI-generated response at the very top of the page.

And the adoption is real: Pew Research found that nearly one in five Google searches (18%) in March 2025 generated an AI summary.

The impact on traffic is striking:

• Click-through rates nearly drop in half when an AIO appears. Users clicked on links only 8% of the time with AIOs, compared with 15% without.

• Hardly anyone clicks the cited links. Only 1% of visits to AIO pages involved clicking a source in the summary.

• Browsing often ends with the AIO. Users ended their session 26% of the time when they saw an AIO, compared with 16% without one.

  
  

👉 For marketers, this means discoverability isn’t guaranteed — even if you’ve historically ranked high.

The Rise of Conversational Queries

Think about your own recent searches. Were they one or two words, or full sentences?

Pew’s data confirms the trend:

• Only 8% of short (1–2 word) searches triggered an AIO.

• That number jumps to 53% for long queries (10+ words).

• 60% of question-based searches (beginning with “what,” “why,” “who,” etc.) produced an AI-generated summary.

  
  

This shift mirrors how people interact with ChatGPT, Claude, and other conversational tools. Instead of keyword-hunting, they’re asking full questions and expecting full answers.

👉 The takeaway? Your content needs to be built around real, human questions — not just keywords.

Who Google Trusts

Google heavily favors a familiar trio: Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit — together they account for about 15% of all sources cited in AIOs.

And government sites are playing a bigger role, too. .gov links appear three times more often in AIOs (6%) than in traditional search results (2%).

This reinforces a hard truth: structured, authoritative, and user-generated content dominates the AI playing field. Your carefully curated website still matters, but so does how your brand shows up in the wider ecosystem.

What This Means for Brand Discoverability

Your website is still your official “source of truth.” But when AIOs become the first impression, brand perception can be shaped before users ever visit your site.

That can be good (instant visibility) or risky (if misinformation or negative UGC dominates). The challenge is to treat your entire digital footprint as the brand.

Strategies to Stay Visible

👉 SEO isn’t dead — but it is evolving into GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. To stay competitive, the digital experience agency, One North, provides five key ways marketers should adapt:

1. Define Your Brand - Invest in PR and backlink campaigns to boost positive visibility. Make sure your brand expression is consistent and compelling.

2. Know Your Users - Understand the goals of your audience and create content that answers those questions.

3. Tell a Sticky Story & Be Unique – Focus on quality over quantity. Google says AIO-driven visitors are more engaged and spend more time on your site.

4. Innovate - Make your digital content AI-friendly. Your end user is still human, but the mediator is Google’s AI crawler.

5. Measure Your Work - Adjust your expectations for organic search and keep an eye on SERP impressions.

   
   

Final Word

Search is being rewritten in real time. AI Overviews will only grow in prevalence, and generative engines are quickly becoming the front door to your brand.

For professional-services marketers, the mandate is clear: don’t just optimize for search — optimize for AI.

Your website, your public relations, your client stories, even your presence on community platforms all feed the algorithms shaping what prospects see.

The question isn’t whether AIOs will change brand discovery — they already have. The question is: will your brand show up in the answer box?

✨ Tell me, is your brand showing up in the answer box? If so, what steps have you taken to make that happen? 👉 Do you have a product or tool you'd like me to explore? Send me a note, and let's connect!