AI Overviews and zero-click search: what now
Google now answers more and more searches itself, with an AI Overview at the top of the results. For you as a business owner, that means less traffic you can take for granted, unless Google uses your page as the source. This page shows what is changing and what you can already do today.
What exactly are AI Overviews
You search for something on Google, for example "what does an SEO specialist cost" or "how does a solar panel lease work". In the past, you got ten blue links. You clicked the first one, read the answer and moved on. That model is over. Google now shows an AI generated answer at the top of the results that answers your question directly. No link needed, no click needed. Google calls this AI Overviews.
Here is how it works: Google's AI model, built on Gemini, reads dozens of sources at once and generates a summary that matches your search
It combines information from several websites into one answer, sometimes with a few source citations underneath. Those sources get a fraction of the clicks that the old number one position used to get.
In the United States, AI Overviews have been running for more than a year
In the Netherlands, the rollout began in 2025 and the feature has been showing up in more and more searches ever since. We do not know exactly how often: we have not measured it and there is no figure from Google, so we do not give one. If you have not seen it yet, you are probably not searching in an incognito window, or Google is not yet showing it for your search term. It is coming, and for many of your customers it is already here.
The zero-click problem: your traffic evaporates
Zero-click search is not new. Google has been answering simple questions like "how old is Mark Rutte" itself for years, through knowledge panels and featured snippets. AI Overviews take this to another level. It is no longer about small facts, but about complex, commercially valuable questions that you as a business owner want to rank for.
A growing share of all Google searches ends without a click to a website, and for searches with an AI Overview the click-through rate falls the hardest. We deliberately do not put a percentage on it: the figures that circulate about this come from different measurements that contradict each other, and we have not measured it ourselves. What you can measure is your own situation, and that is the figure that counts. You are not losing visitors because your content is poor and not because your competitor ranks better, but because Google already gave the answer before anyone got the chance to click.
That hits your revenue directly
Less organic traffic means fewer leads, fewer quote requests and fewer phone calls. If you stay dependent on Google for your flow of customers without adjusting your strategy, the loss of visitors will sooner or later work its way into your revenue. How fast that happens depends on your market and on how many of your customers come in through Google; we do not put a timeframe on that. The nasty part is that many business owners only notice this late. Google Analytics shows a gradual decline that you can easily write off as a seasonal effect, while it is precisely the pages with an AI Overview that are losing traffic.
Which businesses are hit the hardest
Not every sector suffers equally from AI Overviews, but the sectors hit hardest are exactly the sectors most SMEs operate in: service providers, consultants, coaches, installers, estate agents, solicitors, physiotherapists and dentists. Anyone who attracts customers through informational searches feels it.
Why this group in particular
Because potential customers ask questions like "what does an estate agent charge when selling a house" or "difference between a heat pump and a gas boiler". Exactly the type of question AI Overviews are good at. Google reads a few websites, combines the answers and presents a summary that is complete enough to satisfy the searcher. That searcher might then call someone, but not necessarily you, because your name was not in the answer.
E-commerce businesses have a different problem
For product searches, Google increasingly shows product panels and AI comparisons, including prices and reviews. If you are not listed there, you miss the click and the sale, and the big platforms have a head start because their listings are already delivered in a structured format. Do you mainly work for local customers? Then also read our explanation of AI search for local businesses in 2026.
How you do appear in AI Overviews
The good news: AI Overviews get their answers from somewhere, and that information comes from websites. Possibly yours. The question is not whether AI Overviews will disappear, because they will not, but how you make sure your content gets used as the source. If you are the source, you still get traffic and visibility as an authority in your field.
It starts with content that actually gives an answer, not woolly sales talk but concrete information
If someone searches for "how much does it cost to have a website built" and your page gives an honest answer with price indications, factors and real-world examples, there is a good chance Google will use your page as the source.
Write for the question, not for the keyword
Do not optimise a page for "SEO specialist near me", but write content that answers the questions someone asks before hiring an SEO specialist: what does it cost, how long does it take, what are the risks, what should you watch out for. AI Overviews picks up answers to questions, not keywords.
Structure does more work here than word choice. AI models do not read a page the way a human does: they look for structured information, headings that describe the content, paragraphs that match the heading, and lists with clear items. A well-structured page gets cited more often than the same information buried in a jumble of text without headings.
Authority matters too. Google's AI does not just look at the content itself, but also at the trustworthiness of the source. Websites with a strong backlink profile, consistently good content and proven expertise get used as a source more often. That was always true, but it now carries more weight. Want to sharpen your whole approach? Also take a look at Improving your SEO.
An SEO specialist usually works on a monthly basis or an hourly basis. With a monthly fee you buy a fixed number of hours plus accountability, with an hourly rate you pay per hour worked with no agreed scope.
The price mainly depends on the competition in your trade and on how much technical work still needs to happen before content has an effect.
The technical foundation your website needs
Content alone is not enough. The technical side of your website determines whether AI models can even read and understand your content, and that is where things go wrong on many SME websites. Not because the technology is poor, but because nobody ever looked at it from the angle of AI readability.
Structured data and schema markup
Structured data is code that tells search engines what your content means, not just what it says. A price then becomes the price of a service with a currency and a type, an FAQ becomes questions with answers marked up as such. It helps a search engine understand the meaning of your page. What it does not do: Google never mentions structured data as a measure of trustworthiness, nor as a requirement for appearing in AI features. The guidance Google itself gives for it is ordinary SEO basics, unique content and markup that matches what is visible on the page.
Most SME websites have no structured data, or only the basics their WordPress theme adds automatically. Think of LocalBusiness schema on your contact page and Service schema for services. FAQ schema is fine too, but do not count on anything from it: Google restricted the FAQ display on 8 August 2023 to known government and health sites, so an ordinary SME site has not got a rich result from it since then.
Loading speed and crawlability
Google says that crawl capacity mainly depends on your server response time and on server errors: if your server responds slowly, Google fetches fewer pages. That is about how your server responds, not about how fast the page finishes loading in the browser. In the guidelines for AI features, speed does not appear as a requirement. So speed is not a shortcut into that block; it is the reason your pages stay complete and up to date in the index.
AI-specific accessibility
A relatively new development is the llms.txt file. It looks like robots.txt but does something different: it does not control access, it is a reading guide that tells you which pages matter most and how your site is structured. Be honest about its status: in July 2025 Google said it does not support llms.txt and has no plans to, and no AI service has confirmed that it fetches the file. Setting it up takes ten minutes and cannot hurt, but do not count on it for a head start. What a crawler may and may not fetch goes in robots.txt.
What you can already do today
You do not have to tackle everything at once, but you do need to start. You can begin this action plan this week, whether you manage your own website or have an agency.
Step 1, measure your current situation
Open Google Search Console and look at clicks and impressions from the past six months. Filter for pages that are losing traffic and manually search for the main keywords of those pages. If Google shows an AI Overview there, you know where the loss is coming from.Step 2, optimise your most important pages
Take the three pages that are losing the most traffic and rewrite the structure. Add headings that answer questions and make sure the first paragraph under each heading gives a direct answer, because AI models pick up those paragraphs most often as a citation.Step 3, build new content around questions
Find out which questions customers ask before they buy: what does it cost, how long does it take, what are the risks, what is the difference between X and Y. Write a paragraph or a whole article for each question.Step 4, get your technical SEO checked
You can learn to add structured data, improve Core Web Vitals and optimise crawl budget yourself, but it takes time. A specialist does it in a day, figuring it out yourself costs a week. Either works, but do it: without a technical foundation your content will not get the return it deserves.Do not wait until your traffic has halved. Business owners who take action now will have a head start in six months over competitors who are still waiting, because AI Overviews are not going away. There will be more of them.
Frequently asked questions about AI Overviews
What exactly are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are AI generated summaries that Google shows at the top of the search results. They answer your search directly, put together from information across several websites. The difference with featured snippets: not an exact quote, but a completely newly generated answer.
Is SEO dead, then?
No. SEO is changing, but it is not disappearing. The fundamentals, good content, a technical foundation and authority, remain important. What changes is what your visibility looks like: alongside clicks through blue links, it is now also about being cited by AI models. The principle stays the same: the best source wins.
Should I stop blogging?
Absolutely not. Blogs and informational content are exactly the content AI Overviews use as a source. What does need to change is how you write: focus on concrete questions, give direct answers and structure your content so AI models can process it easily. Long, woolly stories without clear answers get ignored.
How do I know whether my website appears in AI Overviews?
Search in an incognito window for your main search terms. If an AI Overview appears, check the source citations. On 3 June 2026 Google announced separate reports for generative AI in Search Console, with data from 18 May 2026 and no retroactive build-up. Those reports have been rolled out to a subset of sites and are therefore not yet available everywhere, so the commonly heard claim that Search Console has shown this since early 2026 is premature. Source: Google Search Central. If you are not listed, you will see that reflected as declining organic traffic.
What AI Overviews are and why you are only seeing them now
Here is how it works: Google's AI model, built on Gemini, reads dozens of sources at once and generates a summary tailored specifically to your search. It combines information from several websites into one answer. Sometimes with a few source citations underneath, but those get a fraction of the clicks the old number one position used to get.
In the United States, AI Overviews have been active for more than a year. In the Netherlands the rollout began in 2025 and is now visible for a large share of commercial searches. If you have not seen it yet, that is probably because you are not searching in an incognito window, or because you use specific search terms where Google does not (yet) show it. But it is coming. And for many of your customers it is already here.
The impact is enormous. Google gives people the answer without them having to click through to your website. Your SEO, your content, your carefully written pages, they get read by an AI model that summarises the answer and presents it as if Google thought of it itself. And the visitor? They are satisfied. They do not click through any more.
Zero-click search is not new. Google has been answering simple questions itself for years. "How old is Mark Rutte", "what is the capital of Norway", that kind of thing already appeared in knowledge panels and featured snippets. But AI Overviews take this to a whole other level. It is no longer about small facts. It is about complex, commercially valuable questions that you as a business owner want to rank for.
Recent analyses show that around 65 per cent of all Google searches now end without a click to a website. For searches where an AI Overview is shown, the organic click-through rate drops by an average of 40 per cent. That is almost half of your visitors that you no longer get. Not because your content is poor. Not because your competitor ranks better. But because Google has already given the answer before anyone gets the chance to click your link.
And this is where it gets painful for many business owners. You may have invested thousands of euros in SEO. You are on page one. You have written blogs, built landing pages, maybe even created an llms.txt file so AI models understand your content better. And yet you see your organic traffic falling. Not because you are doing anything wrong. But because the playing field has changed.
The frustrating part is that many business owners only notice this once it is too late. Your Google Analytics shows a gradual decline that you can easily write off as a seasonal effect or a temporary dip. But if you break the data down by search type and look at which pages are losing traffic, you see a pattern: they are exactly the pages where Google now shows AI Overviews. And that pattern gets stronger every month.
E-commerce businesses have a slightly different problem. For product searches, Google increasingly shows product panels and AI comparisons. "Best running shoes 2026" returns an AI answer with a top five including prices and reviews. If your online shop is not listed there, you miss the click and the sale. And the big players like Amazon and eBay are almost always in there. Small online shops get pushed to the margins.
The national AI Index of 2025 confirms this picture. The adoption of AI in search results is accelerating, and the impact on organic traffic is measurable and growing. The Netherlands is lagging slightly behind the US, but the gap is narrowing with every Google update.
It starts with content that genuinely gives an answer. Not the woolly sales talk many business websites have, but concrete, useful information. If someone searches for "how much does it cost to have a website built" and your page gives an honest answer with price indications, factors that affect the price, and real-world examples, there is a good chance Google will use your page as the source. AI models recognise quality. They prefer pages that answer questions directly over pages that beat around the bush.
Structure is crucial. AI models do not read your page the way a human does. They look for structured information: headings that describe the content, paragraphs that match the heading, lists with clear items, tables with comparable data. A well-structured page gets cited more often than a page with the same information but buried in a jumble of text without headings.
Authority matters. Google's AI does not just look at the content itself, but also at the trustworthiness of the source. Websites with a strong backlink profile, consistently good content, and proven expertise in their field get used as a source more often. This is not new, but it is becoming more important. In the old world of ten blue links, you could reach page one with clever SEO tricks. In the world of AI Overviews, you actually have to be the best source. Or at least one of the best.
Structured data is code you add to your website to tell search engines what your content means. Not what it says, but what it means. A price is not just a number, it is the price of a service with a particular currency and a particular type. An FAQ is not just text, it is questions with answers marked up as such. Google's AI uses structured data to determine which information is trustworthy and relevant enough to cite.
Most SME websites either have no structured data at all, or only the basics their WordPress theme adds automatically. That is not enough. At a minimum you want FAQ schema on your frequently asked questions pages, LocalBusiness schema on your contact page, and if you offer services, Service schema too. The technical SEO page explains how this works and why it is essential for AI discoverability.
AI models and Google's crawlers share the same infrastructure. If your website is slow, it gets crawled less often. Fewer crawls mean Google has less up-to-date information about your content. And for AI Overviews, Google uses the most recent and most relevant information. A website that loads in two seconds has a measurable advantage over a website that takes five seconds. Not just for user experience, but also for how often and how deeply Google indexes your site.
A relatively new development is the llms.txt file. Similar to robots.txt but specifically designed for AI models. It tells AI crawlers which pages they may read, which content is most relevant, and how your site is structured. It is not a standard yet, but Google and other AI players are watching it. Adopting it early gives you a head start. We have built a free generator for it that gives you a working file in five minutes.
Open Google Search Console and look at your clicks and impressions from the past six months. Filter for pages that are losing traffic. Then manually search for the main keywords of those pages and check whether Google shows an AI Overview. If it does, you know where the loss is coming from. This costs you an hour but gives you a clear picture of the damage.
Take the three pages that are losing the most traffic and rewrite them. Not everything, just the structure. Add clear headings that answer questions. Add structured data. Make sure the first paragraph under each heading gives a direct answer to the question in the heading. AI models pick up those first paragraphs most often as a citation.
Find out which questions your customers ask before they buy. Not the keywords, but the real questions. "What does it cost", "how long does it take", "what are the risks", "what is the difference between X and Y". Write a paragraph or a whole article for each question. Those questions are exactly what AI Overviews trigger on, and if you have the best answer, you become the source.
This is the point where most business owners need help. Adding structured data, improving Core Web Vitals, optimising crawl budget, these are technical tasks you can learn but that also take time. A specialist does it in a day. Figuring it out yourself costs you a week. Either is fine, but do it. Because without a technical foundation your content will not get the return it deserves.
Can I turn off AI Overviews for my website?
Technically, you can use a nosnippet tag to stop Google using your content in AI Overviews. But in most cases that is not sensible, because you then also lose your regular snippets and featured snippets. It is better to optimise so that you get cited as a source with a link back to your site.
Search in an incognito window for your main search terms. If an AI Overview appears, check the source citations. Since early 2026, Google Search Console has also shown data on AI Overview impressions in the search traffic report. If you are not listed, you will see that reflected as declining organic traffic.
No. SEO is changing, but it is not disappearing. The fundamentals (good content, a technical foundation, authority) remain important. What changes is what your visibility looks like. Instead of just clicks through blue links, it is now also about being cited by AI models. That requires a different approach, but the principle is the same: the best source wins.
Can TheSEO help me with AI discoverability?
Yes. We analyse how your website performs in AI Overviews, where you are losing traffic, and what opportunities there are. We put together a plan that fits your budget and your market. Get in touch for a free check.
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