The news: New data from Digital Content Next revealed that Google AI Overviews lead to as much as a 25% decrease in publisher referral traffic, reinforcing brands’ and publishers’ ongoing concerns over the tech’s adverse impact on content effectiveness.

• Median YoY referral traffic from Google’s search results to premium publishers was down 10% overall in the eight weeks studied between late spring and early summer, with non-news brands hit the hardest at 14%.
• Declines in publisher referral traffic outnumbered increases two-to-one, with most falling between 1% to 25%.
• In the worst weeks analyzed, referral traffic for news brands fell 16%, while non-news fell 17%.

The trend: Despite Google’s claims that AI Overviews do not have a meaningful negative impact on referral traffic, DCN’s claims echo the findings of many others.

• A Pew Research report showed that AI Overviews cut the number of users who clicked on links from overall search results by nearly half. Pew also found that only 8% of users with searches triggering AI Overviews clicked on a link, compared with 15% in results without AI summaries.
• An Ahrefs study showed that AI Overviews decreased clickthrough rates by an average of 34.5%.
• Analytics company Authoritas found that sites which previously ranked first in Google’s search results lost around 79% of traffic when results showed up below AI Overviews.
• And Seer Interactive found that there was as much as a 70% drop in organic CTRs for search results with AI overviews.

Our take: AI Overviews will continue usurping referral traffic from publishers, meaning that the brands who last will be those who adapt to the change rather than fight it.

• Brands must optimize for AI visibility, not just search rankings. Traditional SEO is no longer enough to thrive in the age of AI. Messaging should be packaged and structured in ways that AI can easily extract and surface: Focused on user questions, clear headers, and direct language.
• KPIs should shift away from being centered too heavily on clickthroughs. Advertisers should instead begin tracking how often their brand is mentioned or shown in AI summaries, how well their value proposition is represented in these snippets, and how AI exposure can bolster downstream actions like conversions from other channels.
• Google’s dominance in search advertising makes it a required channel for most—but diversifying acquisition channels beyond organic search will prove valuable. Amplifying reach through options like social media and influencers will sustain growth.