AI Overviews Are Replacing Featured Snippets: What That Means for Your SEO
A few months ago, something subtle but important began: Those SEO-treasured featured snippets we digital marketers used to optimize for were disappearing. Replacing them, Google's new AI Overviews were popping up. They’re bigger, more detailed, and pretty impossible to ignore.
These AI Overviews don’t just summarize one page. They blend responses from multiple sources and present a full paragraph, often complete with nice little bullet points, right at the top of the search results. It’s like having a mix of all those SEO-perfected blogs and articles smushed into a single, simplified and bite-sized version for utterly easy, rapid consumption.
Graphic courtesy of Ahrefs
Users often don’t even need to open another page. It results in zero-click searching; as the name suggests, users can find their answers without ever clicking a single link on the search page. Which, yes, means ranking nice and high on the search results page may no longer mean you’re guaranteeing coveted traffic on your website.
Ahrefs recently published some compelling research on how these Search Engine Result Page (SERP) features are evolving. Beyond the interesting academic aspects (it’s just plain fascinating from a digital marketing standpoint to see the evolution), this is a reality that’s reshaping how SEO works for businesses like yours. Meaning, how consumers find your information. How Google dictates the web experience. Basically, how our internet experience behaves as a whole. Here’s how, and how you can react to the changes.
The AI Overview Surge
AI Overviews appeared in just 3.5% of US queries at the start of the year. By mid-June, that number had exploded to 27.4%. That’s a 598% increase in just a few months.
Don’t think of this as just a nice new SERP feature; it’s becoming the feature. As Google ramps up its AI presence, traditional result formats are being (literally) shoved down the page literally.
Ryan Law, VP of Content at Animalz, summed it up bluntly on X: “Google is no longer a search engine—it’s a summary engine.” That’s not just commentary. It’s a signal that how we create content must change, fast.
Graphic courtesy of Ahrefs
What to do about it: Focus your content around being useful, not just optimized. Provide expert-level answers. Organize them clearly. The best method is to think of your pages not as blog posts, but as briefings that an AI might want to summarize.
The Rise of Sitelinks
Sitelinks, or the links that pop up underneath a search result or an ad, have exploded from ~8% of search results to over 84%. That’s a 908% increase. And that’s…a lot.
In a nutshell, Google’s trying to replace user choice. Sounds harsh, but such is reality. Instead of scrolling and picking a result, users are given two things: an AI Overview, and sitelinks underneath. If you’re not controlling what those links are—or worse, if you don’t have sitelinks at all—you’re losing space.
Ahrefs notes that sitelinks are now default behavior for branded searches. That means your site structure, internal linking, and how your metadata is written directly impact what shows up.
Graphic courtesy of Ahrefs
What to do about it: Audit your homepage and key service pages. Use clear headers, descriptive navigation, and intentional internal links. Make sure Google can see your structure. Keywords are still important, but oh-so-much less so than the whole package. Remember, you’re basically teaching AI what you have to offer, and telling it why it’s relevant to the search journey.
The Snippet Decline
Not to beat a dead horse, but we repeat: featured snippets have dropped sharply, from 15.4% of queries down to 5.5%.
So if you were ranking with a featured snippet, mourn it, regret it, whatever you need to do to cope with the fact that it’s probably gone. Sorry. You might still rank #1 (yay!), but now your content is likely buried under an AI Overview box.
Glenn Gabe, a well-known SEO consultant, has been tracking this trend for months. He warns that “zero-click searches are becoming the norm.” He’s not being dramatic. Studies show AI Overviews reduce CTR on first-position results by 34.5%.
What to do about it: Re-audit your top pages. If you lost a featured snippet, figure out whether the page now shows an AI Overview. Then ask, is your content one of the sources? And if not, why? And if you’ve never had a snippet, that’s okay. This is your opportunity to pave the way in our new snippet-bereft world.
Graphic courtesy of Ahrefs
Clicks Are Disappearing
Pages that used to get around 4% click-through rates from position one now see about 2.6% when an AI Overview appears. That’s a 34.5% drop.
Even if your content is excellent—even if it ranks high—users are reading the AI summary and moving on. For businesses relying on organic traffic, this is a clear problem.
News publishers are among those feeling the impact hard. The Guardian reported that some news outlets are seeing traffic drops as high as 80% due to AI Overviews. When users don’t click, ads don’t get served, and subscriptions don’t happen.
What to do about it: Don’t rely on traffic volume alone. Shift your strategy to include brand building, email capture, and strong CTAs within your content. Make sure that if someone does land on your page, they stick around or convert. And give them totally new routes to get there in the first place.
How to Adjust: Five Practical Moves
Track which queries used to have snippets: Use Ahrefs or GSC to identify what you’ve lost. Then review those pages.
Format for AI: clear, structured, and expert: Use headers, lists, and schema. Make it easy for machines to pull your answers.
Fix your internal structure: Make sure your most important pages are findable, well-linked, and readable.
Make AI-proof content: Build tools, calculators, and in-depth explainers. Think: what can’t be summarized in a sentence?
Review monthly, not annually: SERP volatility is high. You can’t afford to check rankings twice a year anymore.
The Bottom Line
AI Overviews are changing search. They can significantly push your links down and, even more dramatically, absorb your content into something that rarely sends traffic back to your actual website. But that doesn’t mean the SEO game is over. It’s just a game with very, very different rules now.
Get strategic about how your content shows up. Focus on becoming the source, not just the answer. And, if you're not sure how to start? Reach out to the Gaslight Studios team for expert digital marketing. We’re already helping clients rewrite their content for this new SEO reality. It’s complex, boring and difficult for most. It’s fun for us.
