Is Google's AI Overviews Stealing Your Site's Traffic? Here's How to Find Out

There's no shortage of speculation about how AI platforms are affecting SEO traffic and conversions, but the real impact of Google's AI Overviews — the AI-generated summary answers shown directly on the search results page — on your site's performance largely depends on your content type, target keywords, and audience. According to a recent analysis by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University, AI Overviews can reduce site visits by as much as 38%.

The recently added generative-AI report in Google Search Console still isn't detailed enough to pinpoint exactly which queries AI Overviews is satisfying instead of sending users to your site. So the first step is figuring out which of your previously high-traffic keywords are now triggering AI Overviews. You can check this using rank-tracking tools or by manually searching through a VPN.

Next, compare click-through rate (CTR), impressions, and average position for those keywords before and after AI Overviews appeared. If rankings and impressions stay steady while CTR drops, that's a clear sign the traffic loss is being driven by AI Overviews. Since Google Search Console only retains 16 months of data, it's worth choosing a shorter comparison window.

Once you've identified the lost traffic, it helps to sort the keywords into three groups: those that still have a real chance of getting clicked and lead to commercially important pages; those that are commercially valuable but where AI Overviews answers so fully that it leaves almost no room for outbound links; and purely informational queries with little bearing on conversions.

For the first group, the main strategy is to earn a mention or link inside AI Overviews itself, and to offer unique content — calculators, interactive tools — that gives users a real reason to leave the results page and visit the site. For the second group, the goal is to boost your odds of being cited within AI Overviews through original, first-party content, and to create material that answers the user's likely next question, earning the brand repeated mentions.

For the third, low-commercial-value group, it's worth honestly assessing how valuable that lost traffic really was and deciding whether it's worth spending resources to win it back. As the author notes, not all lost traffic carries the same value for a business — and recognizing that distinction is key to giving internal reporting an accurate picture of what's actually happening.