AI Overviews and Your SEO Strategy: What the Figures Really Say (and What You Need to Do Now)

Since May 2025, Google AI Overviews have also been appearing in Dutch search results. For many website owners and marketers, this feels like a wake-up call: rankings are falling, traffic is dropping, and the traditional ‘number one spot’ seems to be losing its value. Are these concerns justified? Partly. But there’s another side to the story. In this article, we explain exactly what AI Overviews are, what the latest data tells us about their impact on organic traffic, and, most importantly, how you can now adapt your SEO strategy in practical terms.

What exactly are Google AI Overviews?

Google AI Overviews (AIO for short) are AI-generated summaries that Google places at the top of search results, even before the organic links. They are powered by Google’s Gemini model and synthesise information from multiple sources into a single coherent answer. Source citations appear at the bottom of the block, but, as we shall see, these are more decorative than functional.

The concept isn’t new: featured snippets were already doing something similar, but AI Overviews are more dynamic, longer and based on multiple sources at the same time. In the words of Frankwatching: instead of just blue links at the top of the page, users now see an automatically generated summary that combines information from various websites.

The roll-out in the Netherlands: what do we know?

The first AI Overviews appeared in Dutch search results in May 2025. By around 21 May, the feature was widely visible to Dutch users, as part of Google’s international roll-out to more than 200 countries and in over 40 languages. Following the official roll-out, SE Ranking analysed 50,000 randomly selected Dutch search terms and found that AI Overviews appear five times more frequently than before the roll-out: in 26.56 per cent of cases. By way of comparison: Emerce’s annual review for 2025 estimates that between 25 and 35 per cent of all Dutch search terms now trigger an AI Overview.

Note: the percentage varies significantly by sector and fluctuates from month to month. In sectors such as health & pharmaceuticals and business news, AIOs are much more common; in property and motoring, however, they are far less so. Furthermore, AIOs appear almost exclusively in response to informational search queries, not in transactional queries such as ‘hire an SEO agency’ or ‘have a WordPress website built’.

The hard figures: how does an AI Overview affect your organic traffic?

Let’s be honest: the impact is significant. Here are the most reliable figures from a recent large-scale study:

• A 61% drop in organic CTR when an AI Overview appears, from 1.76% to 0.61% (Seer Interactive via Semrush, 2025).
• The top organic result receives 34.5% fewer clicks when there is an AIO on the SERP (SE Ranking, 2025).
• Only 1% of users click on the source links within an AI Overview (Semrush, 2025).
• 88.1% of the search queries that trigger an AIO are of an informational nature, precisely the kind of content on which many B2B websites traditionally rely (Onely/Semrush, 2025).
• With AI Mode (Google’s next step after AIO), as many as 93% of sessions end without a click through to an external website (Semrush, September 2025).

To put it simply: an informative article that used to attract ten visitors a day may now only generate four visitors from the same ranking position. This isn’t some statistical abstraction; everyone can see the difference for themselves in Google Search Console.

Nuance: it isn’t equally bad for everyone

Semrush analysed more than 10 million search terms throughout 2025. The conclusion is more nuanced than the headlines suggest. For search queries without an AI Overview, the CTR actually increased year-on-year. Transactional and navigational intent searches have so far been largely unaffected. And, interestingly, AIOs appear more frequently for keywords with a lower search volume; popular head terms (100,000+ searches per month) do not trigger an AIO in most cases.

The most vulnerable content? Broad, informative pages: definitions, how-to articles and FAQs. That is precisely the backbone of many content marketing strategies. Those who have relied heavily on this without adding their own expertise or data will feel the impact most keenly.

The flip side: AI-driven traffic converts better

There is some good news, which is often overlooked in most analyses. Visitors who do click through from AI-generated responses are significantly more valuable than average organic traffic:

• Visitors referred by AI convert up to 23 times better than regular organic searchers (Ahrefs internal data, 2025).
• AI referral traffic has bounce rates that are 27% lower and longer session durations.
• B2B SaaS companies report conversion rates that are 6 to 27 times higher from AI traffic compared with traditional search traffic.
• Companies that appear as cited sources in AI Overviews see an improvement in brand perception and an increase in branded searches.

The logic is simple: anyone who lands on your site via an AI-generated response already has more context and is further along in the research process. Less traffic, but the right people. That changes the way you need to look at your KPIs.

What Google itself says about optimising for AI Overviews

In June 2026, Google published its first official guidelines for GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation). The key conclusion, which we read with interest, is that optimising for generative AI search is simply optimising for the search experience, and therefore still falls under SEO. Generative AI results such as AI Overviews and AI Mode run on the same search index, ranking systems and quality assessments as regular search results.

This is a significant indication. All sorts of ‘AI SEO hacks’ have been circulating in recent months, separate JSON or Markdown versions of pages for LLMs, aggressive schema stacking, and so on. Google’s own John Mueller has previously stated that clean HTML works perfectly well and that you don’t need bot-only versions of pages. And research confirms that schema markup does not result in a measurable increase in AI citations.

How do you adapt your SEO strategy? 6 practical steps

1. Focus on providing answers rather than on rankings

AI Overviews have a strong preference for content that answers a question directly and clearly, ideally within the first one or two paragraphs of a section. Use question-driven headings (H2/H3), logical lists and clear definitions. Pages that use 120 to 180 words between headings receive significantly more AI citations than pages with very short or very long blocks of text. Q&A formats and FAQ sections consistently perform better in AI responses.

2. Invest in genuine expertise and your own data

Of the content cited in AI Overviews, 85% was published in the last two years, with 44% dating exclusively from 2025. This shows that timeliness matters. But there’s more: branded web content has the strongest correlation (0.664) with AI Overview mentions, much stronger than backlinks (0.218). Investments in brand awareness, PR and thought leadership therefore have a direct impact on your chances of being cited.

Write content that can’t be found anywhere else: your own research, customer experiences, case studies and opinions. That sort of unique content is difficult for generic AI output to replicate and gives Google a reason to choose you as a source.

3. Strengthen your E-E-A-T profile

Google selects sources for AI Overviews based on reliability. Specific indicators that help include: clear author information (name, role, expertise), a consistent publication and update schedule, citations within your content, and reviews or external mentions. Google’s AI Overviews use E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) as a key criterion for source selection.

4. Adjust your KPIs

Organic traffic is no longer the sole measure of success. Add the following: AI citation presence (how often are you cited in AIOs?), brand searches, conversion rate per channel and engagement metrics. Use Google Search Console to monitor drops in CTR per page and identify which content is most vulnerable to AIO cannibalisation.

5. Measure AI traffic in GA4

Google includes a query string when someone clicks through from an AI Overview. By capturing this parameter in GA4 as a new dimension, you can see exactly how much traffic comes from AI Overviews versus regular organic traffic. This gives you insight into the actual share of AI traffic, which content Google considers most valuable, and how the growth of this ‘enriched traffic’ develops over time. Platforms such as ChatGPT can be tracked via UTM parameters (utm_source=chatgpt), available via GTM and GA4.

6. Diversify your traffic sources

AI Overviews show just how vulnerable you are if you rely entirely on organic Google traffic. Think of email marketing, social media, direct traffic via brand campaigns and paid channels. Anyone who previously relied entirely on Facebook traffic and saw it collapse will recognise this pattern. Diversification is no longer a luxury; it is risk management.

GEO: a complement to, not a replacement for, SEO

You’re hearing the term Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) more and more often: optimising content so that AI systems such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity cite your content. Our take: GEO does not replace SEO; it is an extension of it. A strong SEO foundation makes your GEO strategy more effective, as Google AI Overviews still rely on the Google index.

Interesting fact: 40% of AI Overview citations come from pages that rank outside the top 10. This means that a lower ranking position does not necessarily rule out appearing in an AI Overview, provided your content is answer-oriented, well-structured and authoritative enough. At the same time, 76.1% of the cited URLs do appear in the top 10. So ranking highly certainly still helps.

For platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity It should be noted, however, that different selection mechanisms apply than those used for Google AI Overviews. Perplexity places greater emphasis on recent content and citation density; ChatGPT prioritises authority and comprehensiveness. A cross-platform GEO approach is therefore more complex than purely Google optimisation.

Which content is the most vulnerable, and which is not?

• High risk: definitions, explanatory articles (‘what is’), how-to content lacking a unique perspective, superficial glossaries.
• Medium risk: comparison articles, industry news without original analysis, generic FAQ pages.
• Low risk: transactional pages (product pages, services, pricing), local landing pages, branded content, in-depth case studies using our own data.
• Opportunities: content that includes original research, expert interviews, specific experiences or unique perspectives that AI cannot synthesise.

What we do ourselves and what we recommend

We actively monitor which of our clients’ pages are AIO triggers using tools such as Semrush and Google Search Console, and link this to GA4 data to quantify the actual impact on CTR and conversions. This is followed by a pragmatic prioritisation: which informative pages deserve an upgrade to genuine thought leadership content, and which ‘thin content’ pages would be better merged or removed?

In doing so, we take a realistic approach to managing expectations: anyone who overhauls their entire content architecture purely for GEO is missing the point. The foundations, technical SEO, a strong internal linking structure, and relevant, well-structured content, remain unchanged. What is changing is the bar for quality and the way in which you measure success. And that bar has been raised.

Want to read more about the wider context? Take a look at the Semrush AI Overviews research based on more than 10 million search terms, one of the most comprehensive data sources currently available.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Google AI Overviews already available in the Netherlands?

Yes. From May 2025, AI Overviews will appear in Dutch search results. The roll-out is taking place in phases and the display rate varies by sector and month, but the feature is available to all Dutch Google users aged 18 and over.

How much of an impact do AI Overviews have on my organic traffic?

That depends very much on your content mix. If you have a lot of informative content (definitions, how-to guides, FAQs), the risk of a drop in CTR is greatest, on average, 61% lower when an AIO appears. Transactional and local pages are, for the time being, largely unaffected. Check Google Search Console for CTR changes per page to measure your own exposure.

What is the difference between SEO and GEO?

SEO focuses on discoverability in traditional search results (the blue links). GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, focuses on visibility as a cited source in AI-generated answers, such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity. The two overlap significantly: a strong SEO foundation directly benefits GEO. GEO is a complement, not a replacement.

Do I need to completely overhaul my content strategy because of AI Overviews?

No. But you do need to take a critical look at which content is vulnerable and which adds value that AI cannot provide on its own. Invest in your own expertise, data and unique perspectives. Adjust your KPIs. And diversify your traffic sources. The fundamentals of good SEO remain valid; the bar for quality is simply being raised.

How do I measure AI traffic in Google Analytics 4?

Google adds a query string to clicks from AI Overviews. By capturing this parameter in GA4 and converting it into a custom dimension, you can see exactly how much traffic comes from AIOs versus regular organic traffic. For ChatGPT traffic, use UTM parameters (utm_source=chatgpt) in conjunction with GTM. You can set this up today; no additional tools are required.