Kavin Paulson
Introduction
Since the launch of ChatGPT and the wave of AI chatbots flooded the Internet and subsequently with the launch of SGE (Search Generative Experience) which is now called AI overviews, there have been a lot of discussions and predictions on how these disruptions will impact traditional search and in turn SEO.
There are concerns about the rise of zero-clicks search and it’s already predicted by many that these developments will further result in decline in organic clicks.
In a recent Zero-click search study by SparksToro (Powered by Datos), 58.5% of the Google searches in US are Zero-click searches and similarly it’s at 59.7% in Europe (EU).
They are some of the most sought after social media thought leaders in the world. They are widely-recognized and are greatly influential on social media. We thought it would be fun to test their intelligence 😉 and ofcourse, we knew that the views and insights shared by these experts would be useful to our readers.
Note: This is part III of the four-part article series titled ‘SEO in 2024 and Beyond: Understanding the Chaos’. You may read the first two parts of the article here: Part I: Key SEO Trends: Connecting the Dots from the Past to the Present and Part II: The Big Bang Changes in the Non-Google Search Landscape: What You Need to Know.
Disclaimer: This article is based on my research and insights from industry leaders, along with my own assessments and predictions. While some of the predictions are speculative, others are based on likely or obvious outcomes. AI Overviews is a newly launched and evolving SERP feature, with ongoing testing and refinement. Given the volatile nature of the AI search space and limited data on its impact, these predictions may or may not be accurate, and future updates from Google could significantly alter the search landscape. Therefore, these insights should be taken with caution, as new developments may shift the landscape.
These developments raise four crucial questions.
Let’s analyze and find answers to the first two questions in this part of the article series.
Let’s look at some conflicting stats and some opinions about the impact or possible impact of AI overviews on traditional search and organic traffic before I move on to discuss my opinions and assessments.
Here are some interesting and conflicting viewpoints, stats and reports on the impact of AI overviews:
AIO (AI Overview) has been a disruptor in search landscape and a big change is always scary. In addition, with the AIOs going through multiple phases of rollouts and rollbacks (scaling up and scaling down of the visibility of the AIOs across results) after the backlashes and criticisms it faced because of the search quality issues and with the rising publishers concerns over the impact of AIOs on CTRs and traffic to their sites have all added more to the uncertainty and chaos.
Moreover, there’s no clear data available to measure the impact of AIOs on CTRs, clicks and traffic to the sites (for example, GSC, for now, doesn’t provide the data related to AIOs separately) adding more to the unpredictability. The good part is that SEO tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs have added AI Overviews as an SERP feature filter which can get you data related to your site’s or competitor sites’ visibility in AIOs and the keywords for which AIOs appear. This may help in broadly understanding the impact that AIOs may have in search related to specific niche or segment but the impact on CTRs, clicks and traffic may not be accurately measured, at the moment.
One of the core objectives of Google is to help users find the right content/information in shortest possible time (shorter search time) and thus user satisfaction can be achieved.
User satisfaction is achieved by serving quality search results (including content served in the search results) and they find quality content on the websites they visit via the search results.
On top of that what Google primarily wants is that, like any other website or platform, it wants users to spend more time on search results – find the answer/information right there or when the right information is not found, go for query refinement (or AIO repeat search) or wiggle through the multi-format search results to find what you are looking for in the search results as much as possible rather than moving away from the search results to other websites in search of answers or information they are looking for. Though it can never be 100% possible, but ‘as much as possible’ is the keyword here.
This may be contrary to the trust and understanding between Google and the publishers and this may also, at some level, be contrary to or work against one of the objectives of Google, i.e. to help user find the right information in the shortest possible time because AIO and multi-format results may also in many cases overwhelm the users, and prevent them from reaching the right web page for answers instead they may end up wiggling through the rabbit hole called AI overviews-based refinements and multi-format search features; however Google has its own compelling reasons to push its search landscape in this direction – let’s discuss those.
In the early days and for many years, Google-publishers relationship was paramount and sending traffic to the publishers that deserved the traffic (due to the quality of their content) was important for Google and for the ecosystem to thrive. The relationship was mutually beneficial. Has anything changed now? Yes, publishers are still important for Google’s ecosystem to thrive however Google has gained more bargaining power now compared to the publishers in this relationship due to the power of their knowledge vault (that they have built over time) and with integrated Generative AI – they are less dependent on publishers to provide the kind of information that the users are looking for – Google has turned into an answer and conversational engine in it’s true sense with the arrival of AI Overviews (AIOs). Yes, there are a lot of inconsistencies and gaps in the AI-generated results which will be resolved over time.
Another big reason for this shift is that with various platforms like social media platforms, AI chat bots etc competing with Google for more user ‘engagement time’, it’s important from business perspective for Google to showcase increased user engagement on the search results rather than just acting as a platform that facilitates user navigation towards other websites. Google will have to retain and grow that user segment that prefers on-platform (zero-clicks) answers and recommendations where Google is in direct competition with social media platforms and AI chat bots.
Since on-platform content consumption is on the rise, Google has no option but to move in that direction and thus giving rise to the era of ‘zero-clicks’ in search results. It also makes sense to serve more direct answers (as much as possible) in the era of short attention span and impatience to cater to that segment of the audience.
The third possible reason maybe to pick on the opportunity and leverage the changing landscape to give a real boost to ad clicks and bring down the organic clicks. Remember, Google, at the end of the day, is a commercial entity, it won’t spare any opportunity to generate maximum revenue possible through all possible means – it’s a pure speculation – Google may find ways to lead users to click more on ads when AIO starts featuring ads. AIO-based ads are going to be interesting where the ads maybe presented as relevant recommendations along the user’s search journey vis-à-vis the traditional search ads. We are certain that Google will roll out ads in AIOs sometime sooner or later and in fact the testing ads in AI overviews is currently underway.
Another argument made is that Google now, with the changing trend and sensing the opportunity, may be testing with AIOs to shorten the search-based purchase journey – quickly guide the searchers through the top and middle stages of the funnel with tailored content and recommendations and help them reach the bottom of the funnel to make the final purchase. More users reaching the transactional search phase, more the opportunities to show ads – remember, with AIOs guiding the searchers during the transaction search phase as well, there is an opportunity to show back-to-back ads in the AI Overviews with refined search and follow-up questions.
If this works the way Google may want and succeeds at making shoppers’ job easy with the right recommendations and guiding them through the purchase journey, will Google be able to recover a good percentage of product search volume that it has lost to Amazon and alike over the years?
Well, it will be interesting to watch how the AIO-based ads are going to disrupt the organic search and clicks, searchers’ journey and the paid search space.
Does this all mean that Google wants to do away with the traditional search in favour of AIOs gradually and become a full-blown conversation aka recommendation engine that only shows answers?
The short answer is that the traditional search is not going away anytime soon and we will discuss the reasons behind the same in the later part of the article, however given the fact that Google is competing with multiple players in the search landscape (read the second part of this article series where I discuss about the big bang changes in the non-Google search landscape and the strategies that Google has adopted to compete better with its competitors), particularly when the AI race is getting intense day by day, the launch of AIO was inevitable and Google wants to bring the best of both the worlds – AI-driven answer and recommendation engine plus the traditional search that will cater to the different segments of the audience.
While the Google-publishers ecosystem and traditional search, being Google’s core search model till now, is still important for Google, the push to enable users adopt and get used to the AIOs as well along with the traditional search is important to prevent the AI-awed users from completely switching to and become habitual to AI Chatbots like ChatGPT and alike.
With the raise of zero-clicks trend and with AIOs appearing on top with the option to ask follow-up questions and query refinements, and on top of that ads occupying the top spots, it’s a no brainer to predict that there will continue be a decline in CTR for the blue links (considered as traditional search). Trends already show decline in CTR.
However, the magnitude of the impact depends on many factors like the SERP construct in your niche, percentage and frequency of the appearance of the ads and AIOs in search, your site’s position in the SERP for the given keywords that you rank for and more importantly how soon and what percentage of searchers/users get used to AIOs and change their search/clicking habits vs percentage of searchers/users stick to and prefer old ways to search/clicking (remember, it’s hard to change habits particularly with the older population which is a factor to be considered here).
Sites holding top positions in traditional search will be on the losing side however the good part is that the top-ranking websites usually enjoy high authority and thus, their chances of appearing in AIOs also go up and this may mitigate the loss to an extent.
Moreover, Google has already moved to a multi-format search result with filters and users get overwhelmed with options and with AIOs, searchers are spoilt with options thereby the visibility and attention followed by clicks get divided among multiple options. The decline in CTR has already been happening but with AIOs, we may see a bigger impact.
Callout: Anna Crowe predicts that AI leads to 60% decrease in average CTR however I don’t see such a drastic decline in CTR happening across, rather such drastic decline in CTR may happen in certain scenarios only. For example, for a Tofu keyword where user may get satisfied with a short or summarized answer, the decline in CTR may go beyond 60%.
Another interesting perspective from Microsoft Bing’s Fabrice Canel is that while AI Answers or recommendations with links may lead to less click volume but more qualified clicks. Will AI answers or AIOs lead to better results served that precisely match user intent and thereby sending more relevant traffic to the websites? Well, if that happens eventually, it may turn out to be a win-win situation for all the stakeholders involved!
Searches where traditional blue links get pushed down by ads and AIOs and depending on how much space does AIO occupy, you lose positions and thus your visibility goes down. So, top positions in traditional blue links are no more the same as it used to be. Appearing in AIOs and other top performing SERP features in your niche (for potential keywords) should be your primary goal along with securing the top positions in blue links.
A study conducted by Gilad David Maayan, CEO and Founder of Agile SEO, based on analysing 23 websites concluded that the aggregate organic traffic drop as a result of SGE (now AIOs) was 18-64%. Anna Crowe also predicts that the organic traffic loss could be 30%.
While we all know and agree that with AIOs, emerging Zero Clicks trend and growing combination of SERP features impacting the impression share and click share, the organic traffic to websites will continue to see a decline however percentage of the loss in organic traffic to websites may widely vary and will depend on multiple factors and that’s the reason why you see a wide outcome range from the study done by Gilad David Maayan. On the other hand, you may also experience a surge in organic traffic to your site if you get featured well in AIOs across your target keywords.
Initially, it looked like direct AI-generated answers may become a nightmare for publishers, however with the increase in citations in AIOs and that too appearing like the traditional blue links in a listed format, it looks like traditional search overshadowed by another traditional search in a different format. Though, CTR may still be a concern because unlike traditional search, in case of AIOs, answer is already served in a neat and summarized format and links are just for further reading only plus the ranking in AIOs may be very volatile and dynamic however AIOs with rich citations still open new opportunities for publishers to get featured and be visible on top.
So, it’s not all bad, there are many bright spots too. To answer the question, will traditional search survive? If we consider only blue links as traditional search – yes, the traditional search as we know maybe fading into the background – however, there are some strong factors (discussed below) that may help it survive and if we consider all the clickable results on the search results as traditional, then we should rather say that the traditional search is evolving! As long as links continue to appear in search results, clicks will continue to happen. As long as links appear and clicks are happening, the traditional search lives on! Google Ads VP, Shashi Thakur, also ascertains that how AI Overviews appearing with links result in users clicking on the links which supports this argument that I make.
It is a no brainer to say that AIOs impact the informational queries the most. With quick answers and option to ask follow-up questions to get a refined and updated answers, AIOs are likely to impact the CTR significantly and traffic to informational pages/websites.
AIOs will also change the search query patterns as people are most likely to ask more specific questions and use conversational queries.
However, while AIOs may increase zero click searches, there will be a saturation point beyond which clicks will continue to happen as there are many scenarios where people want to click and move to the web pages to read further about the topics. A few of the scenarios are strong habit to read comfortably with focus on the web page, need additional information, which is not provided by AIO, need to gain additional perspective or to read expert commentaries, reading a multi-format content on a web page gives you a different experience compared to reading long-form answers on a search result etc.
Reputed websites with high quality, interactive and engaging content that brings first-hand experience and perspectives from the experts will continue to enjoy high visibility and grab a high share of the clicks.
On top of that, if your site gets featured in the AIO citations, the CTR and clicks maybe on the higher side.
If your website has high visibility for informational queries and you are dependent on informational traffic, then it’s high time you started auditing your content if it lacks the format required to survive in the AIO era and if it lacks quality, first-hand information, unique opinions or perspectives from experts and overall if it doesn’t offer something new, it’s time to go for a massive content revamp.
MOFU, being the consideration phase, the research gets more serious, and users would ideally get more cautious about where the information presented is coming and thus, credibility of the sources matter more and so is the brand awareness.
Unlike the AIOs for TOFU keywords which may cause significant zero-clicks, the AIOs for MOFU keywords, I believe, may have a moderate to low impact on clicks and CTR. In other words, people may prefer to visit websites to get detailed comparisons, reviews and opinions from experts. Here are the reasons with some examples:
Here’s an example of a TOFU search/keyword (refer to the above screenshot) for which you have the answer on top. Many people may not want to read it in detail but may want to just know what it is. So, for queries like these, zero clicks may happen. Having said that there are many TOFU keywords for which users may want to deep dive and learn further (there is a segment of users who always have the tendency to deep dive and research).
For MOFU keywords/search, my assessment is that a significant segment of users may not be okay with the quick answers and rather would want to deep dive and understand what the experts say as it’s the consideration phase.
In this example, the AIO lists out the best fitness apps however it’s not clear on what basis these apps have been listed out as the best vs. checking this list on a fitness blog managed by fitness experts makes more sense. Secondly, I may want to read more about these apps and their features and compare to see what makes them the best and which one is suitable for me. Don’t you think the citations appearing at the right are tempting enough for the users to click and read further; particularly the one that says (see the screenshot) – “we’ve tested the best workout apps 2024 for at-home training”.
Here’s another example below where the users may want to go to a blog post authored by a subject matter expert in the consideration phase rather than a compilation done by AIO which may lack the context that the users may want.
Should I trust the AI-generated answer here or click the Forbes article (see the screenshot) and read the full post written by an expert in the field?
Google, as mentioned before, has also started experimenting with the idea of shortening the user journey from discovery to purchase by disrupting the MOFU phase; product results or product card display in AI Overviews for MOFU keywords is already happening.
Image source: SERanking.com
If product grids start appearing in AI overviews across TOFU and MOFU keywords along with ads in AI Overviews, will that shorten the purchase curve? Well, it’s highly possible that a segment of searchers may get attracted towards the products and end up abruptly abandoning the research phase and move to the purchase phase. So yes, there’s a possibility of a considerable click share maybe taken away by the AI Overview results. It is to be noted that the CTR of the MOFU results leading to MOFU content/pages may get impacted. However, on the other hand, a significant segment of the searchers that prefer to complete their research will not abandon the research phase abruptly. It also depends on the industry, nature of the product and the pricing. For ex: for low value products, the research phase matters less compared to the kind of research required before you make the decision to purchase high value products.
As far as our research goes, AI Overviews are not appearing for purchase keywords rather shopping ads, regular search ads inconsistently, followed by popular products/product grids dominate the top results, however sooner we’ll most probably see AI Overviews with product recommendations and product ads in the search results for BOFU keywords.
How will AI Overviews impact the BOFU searches/keywords? The product grids, the recently rolled out SERP feature may already be affecting the CTR of the blue links. So, no wonder, with additional SERP features appearing in search results, the click share gets further divided which will have an impact on CTR.
The click share will get divided however it’s obvious that the percentage of zero clicks will be lower compared to TOFU or MOFU searches as the clicks must happen for shopping and transactions to happen and that’s the user intent behind BOFU searches.
The probability of zero clicks is comparatively lower (though scenarios like follow up questions or query refinement may contribute to the same) and the AI Overview for BOFU searches may merely act as a recommendation section which may point to a mix of category, product and review pages along with tailored recommendations. Since the user intent is to make a purchase at this stage, the clicks to reviews maybe considerably lower compared to the clicks to the category and product detail pages.
AI Overviews for BOFU Searches will not cause as much zero clicks that TOFU followed by MOFU searches will, but it will take away a share of clicks and thus it will impact the CTR of product grids and the blue links for sure.
The interesting thing about AI-driven AI overviews for BOFU keywords is that it has the potential to bring the exact products that the searchers are looking for, for niche and specific queries and thereby the AI Overviews results may attract better share of clicks. For example, for a query like ‘buy waterproof leather hiking boots for women with arch support size 8’. Well, with users getting habitual to AI driven search, complex and niche queries like these will become more common.
Another question that needs to be asked is what percentage of users will click the AIO links or ask follow-up questions and wiggle through the AIO guided results vs the percentage that will skip through the AIOs and end up clicking any of the product grid results or the blue links (mostly category pages)?
Well, my assessment is that it depends on the audience segment; in this scenario, I would like to segment shoppers into two types – casual shoppers and meticulous shoppers. For example, exceptions apart, men are usually casual shoppers and women are meticulous shoppers – they tend to do thorough research, ask a lot of questions, go through reviews, consider multiple options before zeroing in on one product. AI Overviews guided purchase will be helpful for meticulous shoppers vs casual shoppers may straight away do a Google search and end up clicking on any of the top 5 blue links. I personally like to Google and head straight to Amazon by clicking on the Amazon link from the search results when I find Amazon ranking on top (Note: sometimes I head straight to the Amazon app and sometimes I may head to Google as I want to explore the options and most of the time I prefer to click on any of the top ranking blue links) and if I don’t find the right product on Amazon (which is very unlikely), I may end up considering other reputed e-tailers ranking on top. There are two reasons for me to do that; I’m usually overwhelmed by the multi-modal search results that get generated by Google (too many options to consider) and secondly It saves my time.
So, a segment of the audience will get adapted to the new-age shopping search powered by AI Overviews (mostly women and Gen-Z) and a segment of users who find it hard to change habits or they are more of casual shoppers who want to save time and don’t really bother to explore multiple options (mostly men and millennials and older generations) will continue to stick to the traditional search. There will also emerge a messy middle from both the segments and other segments which will overlap and oscillate between multi-format results that Google throws up for purchase queries. It is to be noted that personalization, query type and real-time factors will also impact searchers behaviour.
Callout: here is another contrary and interesting perspective from Danny Goodwin that the blue links may completely disappear from the All search which will be replaced by AIOs only and thereby paving the way for search to become like the computer from “Star Trek”.
He quotes former Google Chief Technology Officer Craig Silverstein (2003).
“When search grows up, it will look like Star Trek: you talk into the air (“Computer! What’s the situation down on the planet?”) and the computer processes your question, figures out its context, figures out what response you’re looking for, searches a giant database in who-knows-how-many languages, translates/analyses/summarises all the results, and presents them back to you in a pleasant voice. I think this technology is about, oh, 300 years off.”
He goes on to write that links will now live in Web Filter.
My take: with the pace at which AI advancements have been happening in the last few years, nothing can be ruled out however I strongly see that links will not disappear from the mainstream search results (All) anytime soon because of multiple factors: links are sources and credits. They are strongly the need and support of the current search behaviour and habits which will remain consistently for a very long period. Google strongly favours multi-modal search, and links are integral part of the same (also refer to Sundar Pichai’s quote mentioned below on the importance of links). Multi-modal search result is a great differentiator (at least as of now) from AI Chatbots. To address that user segment which may want AI Overview only screen, Google may encourage them to use Gemini standalone App (as they pit it against ChatGPT alike) but killing traditional search (aka links) will not happen for a very long period. The final big reason for Google not to do that so is that their multi-billion dollars advertising business heavily relies on traditional search and link clicks.
Yes, there is no doubt that AI Overviews (AIOs) will have a significant impact on changing SERP user behaviour and thereby impacting your clicks, CTR, organic traffic and your search visibility however does that mean traditional search (SERP links) are going to become graveyards eventually and users will mostly consume content on SERPs only?
The short answer it no and here’s why I think the traditional search will survive, evolve and thrive in different forms but will continue to keep crushing it.
My definition of traditional search is that you search, you are shown the results and then you click on a link to move to a web page or app page to further read, see, watch or consume content there and not on the platform itself.
The traditional search of the past i.e. 10 blue links has already been changing drastically even before AIOs came into existence – featured snippets, local pack, sitelinks, top stories, image pack, videos, discussions and forums, knowledge card, knowledge panel, people also ask, related searches and more – the search results have been muti-format for a very long time now and the search results have been overwhelming the users with options including many click options (including the clicks that take you to another result within Google) – so, for the sake of our discussions going forward in this article and technically speaking, the traditional search is not the 10 blue links anymore – so, when we say traditional search, we are referring to the modern day SERPs minus the newly launched AIOs that may contribute to the rise in Zero-clicks.
Yes, the rise of Zero-clicks is evident, and the statistics are out there and yes, there will be a considerable decline in clicks (majorly I believe for informational queries) however once the dust settles, the traditional search will thrive and evolve as it has always been.
AI Overviews is undoubtedly a disruptor and is impacting the traditional search to a considerable extent. AI Overviews is contributing to the rise of Zero-clicks and thereby impacting CTR and traffic to the websites however the percentage of Zero-clicks that is continuing to raise now will stabilize at some point (another possibility is that the decline in CTR and traffic may not remain the same, this could well possibly be the initial surge in interest to check it out or test it out by the users which may come down and stabilize eventually) and the clicks will continue to happen as long as links appear in search results and as long as links continue to appear, traditional search will live on, evolve and stay relevant in different formats.
I quote Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai on the importance of links and thereby implying how traditional search will co-exist with AIOs which pretty much summarizes the arguments I’ve made above.
“I think part of what makes Google Search differentiator is while there are times we give answers, it’ll always link to a wide variety of sources. We’ve had answers in Search now for many, many years. We are just now using generative AI to do that.”
“I think [links will] always be an important part of Search.”
“There will be times when they want quick answers. My son is celiac, so we did a quick question to see whether something is gluten-free. We just want to know. But often it leads to more things, and then you want to explore more. I think understanding that, meeting all that needs, is part of what makes Search unique.”
Source: Search Engine Land
Having said that, it is not to say that the emerging trend of Zero Clicks or the dominance of AI Overviews is to be ignored, many thought leaders have already started talking about the emergence of On-SERP SEO and the importance of building the brand presence in the SERPs by focusing on building and optimizing Zero-click content. There are tons of articles already published on strategies to build zero-click content and build your brand presence in zero-click results. Go, Google it!
More than Zero Clicks, the bigger concern is about the multiple click options that search results continue to serve with a growing number of SERP features which is likely impacting your CTR and click share depending on where you rank on the SERPs.
Multiple refinement in queries, follow up or query stacking resulting in increase in searches (It is predicted that the searches per day may increase by 6X due to AIOs which is actually contrary to Google’s core idea to help users find answer or information faster) and the rise in new keywords plus the search query length (the long tails/Q&A type queries), due to AIO driven search habits are the other trends and their impact that we need to keep a watch on.
In this part (third-part) of the four-part article series, we focused on analysing the possible impact of AI Overviews on traditional search across clicks, CTR, organic traffic, keyword type-based search results and impressions however we didn’t discuss the impact of AI chatbots and other AI-driven search engines’ impact on Google search and how these factors may in turn have an impact on organic traffic coming to websites and Apps from Google.
In the final part of the four-part article series, we shall discuss, analyse and find answers to the following questions:
Stay Tuned!
This article addresses SEOs across board – so, if you are an experienced professional, you may already know some of the things I have discussed in the article and they may sound obvious but they have been purposefully discussed to connect the dots and present the whole picture so that SEOs at all levels ( including beginners/newbies ) can understand.
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