Sean Walsh
Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.
A new publisher report suggests Google’s AI Overviews are having a major impact on organic search traffic, with clicks from traditional search down 42% across Define Media Group’s portfolio since AI Overviews began expanding in Google Search. In simple terms, that means more people are getting answers directly on the search results page, and fewer are clicking through to websites in the way they used to.
For anyone working in digital marketing, this matters because it is another sign that visibility and traffic are no longer the same thing. A brand can still appear prominently in Google, but if the answer is summarised for the user before they ever reach the site, click-through rates can fall. That is especially important for businesses and publishers that rely on evergreen content, meaning helpful pages built to rank steadily over time for informational searches.
What AI Overviews actually are
Google AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries that now appear at the top of some search results. Rather than showing only links, Google may generate a written answer that pulls together information from multiple sources. For users, this can feel fast and convenient. For marketers and site owners, it can mean fewer visits from people who get what they need without clicking.
The biggest losses appear to be in evergreen and informational content
The Define Media findings suggest the pressure is falling hardest on informational content rather than breaking news. Before AI Overviews launched, the sites in its dataset averaged 1.7 billion organic clicks per quarter from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024. After launch, traffic dropped 16% immediately and, according to the report, never fully recovered. As Google expanded AI Overviews further in May 2025, the decline accelerated, reaching 42% below the pre-AI baseline by Q4 2025.
That does not mean content marketing is dead. It does mean old assumptions are becoming less reliable. Publishing a useful guide and expecting traffic to arrive simply because it ranks is no longer a safe strategy on its own.
Why news publishers are seeing a different pattern
One of the more interesting findings is that breaking news has held up better. Define Media says breaking news traffic grew 103% from November 2024 through early 2026 across Google Search, Google News and Discover. The reason appears to be that Google is still more cautious about using AI summaries for fast-moving stories, where facts change quickly and the risk of inaccuracy is higher.
The report also notes that AI Overviews appear much less often for news queries than for some other categories. In practice, many major news searches still trigger Top Stories instead. Top Stories is the news box Google shows near the top of results, linking users directly to publisher articles.
Google Discover is becoming more important
Another key shift is the growing role of Google Discover. Discover is Google’s personalised content feed, shown in places like the Google app and mobile home screens, where articles are recommended based on a user’s interests rather than a typed search. According to Define Media, Discover traffic across its portfolio grew 30%, and Discover and web search are now driving roughly equal traffic for the first time in its dataset.
That matters because it points to a different model of visibility. Instead of relying only on ranking when someone searches, brands and publishers may need to create content that earns passive distribution through feeds, recommendations and current interest.
What this means for marketers and clients
The main takeaway is not that search has stopped mattering. It is that search is fragmenting. Traditional blue-link traffic is under more pressure, while visibility is spreading across AI summaries, news boxes, Discover feeds and other Google surfaces.
For clients, this means performance conversations need to become more nuanced. A drop in organic clicks does not always mean a drop in relevance or visibility. It may mean Google is answering more of the query itself. That is still a commercial problem if fewer visitors reach the site, but it changes how we diagnose the issue and how we respond.
The practical response
The most sensible response is not panic, but adaptation.
- Brands should put more focus on content that offers something harder for Google to summarise away. That includes original insight, strong opinion, proprietary data, fresh commentary, first-hand experience and tools or assets users genuinely need to visit the site to use.
- They should also pay closer attention to content formats that can perform beyond classic search, including timely articles, expert commentary, brand-led thought pieces and content built with Discover visibility in mind.
- This is another reminder that digital marketing is moving away from a world where success was mainly about ranking for a keyword and collecting the click. The new environment is more complex.
- Brands still need search visibility, but they also need stronger content differentiation, broader distribution and a clearer understanding of where traffic is actually coming from.
In other words, being visible in Google is no longer enough. The real question is whether visibility still turns into visits, attention and commercial value. Right now, the answer depends more than ever on the type of content you produce and where Google chooses to surface it.
What clients should take away from this
Clients do not need to learn every technical detail behind AI Overviews. They do need to understand that the search landscape has changed. Some content types are becoming less effective at driving clicks, while others, especially timely and feed-friendly content, may be gaining importance. The winners will be the brands that stop thinking only about rankings and start thinking more broadly about attention, discoverability and why someone would choose to click at all.
