As soon as AI Overviews were launched in August 2024 in the UK, there was a flurry of activity with the usual crowd saying “Jump in or get left behind”. It was a serious case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and the usual hype with people positioning themselves as the new “gurus” in an artform that had no definitions. As is typical in SEO there are vague guidelines from Google but rarely anything specific so all the SEO advice around AI-powered SEO has been conjecture.
Of course, that didn’t stop the “gold rush” and we had everything from “chunking” to LLMs.txt making their way into the world of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), AI SEO, and EIEIO SEO, etc.
However, there were some stalwarts of SEO saying “hold fire” and sensibly asking that we should see the data before diving in with both feet first. Lily Ray has been one, alongside Google’s own John Mueller and Gary Ilyes; “Just keep doing solid SEO” was the advice.
And so, for over a year, I’ve continued to conduct SEO as I pretty much have for the last 25 years, with continued success.
Until October.
This week I had a tough SEO report to present; despite an almighty effort and my usually-solid best-practice SEO, the focus keywords on a client’s website weren’t doing as well as I’d expected. Brand visibility was fantastic, and the target terms I was working on nearly all rose in rank. But clicks were down as was CTR, obviously.
And whilst I was compiling the report I was thinking and asking myself why, despite such monumental effort and improving position, were clicks so down?
Looking for evidence, I found a timely Search Engine Journal story yesterday that cited a report saying CTR was down around 60% since AI Overviews (AIOs). And even when there were no AIOs or AI Mode, clicks were still massively down by approximately 40% – there was even a headline conclusion in the report that “people are just not clicking on links in Google as much anymore”…
Even when AI Overviews don’t appear, users are simply clicking less everywhere, with Google CTRs hitting new lows across search.
Sad. But according to the stats, true.
I deep dived into one of the client’s top terms for one of their websites (I’m working on two – one WordPress, the other Webflow). It was a low volume term in an extremely niche sector and I’d kept them in the #1 spot for at least two months in a row, but the clicks… were just not there any more.
So I checked an incognito Chrome window to see just what was going on – and this is what I saw:
- a HUGE full-page AI Overview,
- 3x competitors cited on the right-hand side,
- then below the fold, a HUGE sponsored result form one of the cited competitors, complete with screen-filling sitelinks,
- 2x more sponsored results, and then finally…
- my client’s website in the #1 organic position.
I’d helped them achieve and maintain a number one position in Google but no clicks.
Of course, we’ve seen this before, with everything from Google Shopping to Featured Snippets, to Google Ads taking away clicks from a top organic listing. It’s been going on for years. “Zero click searches”, they’re called. I think Rand Fishkin brought it up in the keynote speech at BrightonSEO in 2019 IIRC.
And now we’re in that position again – number one ranking, no clicks, and loads of AI Overviews and Google Ads. No wonder we weren’t getting traffic.
So what’s an SEO to do?
Don’t Panic!
It’s now time to start doing all that GEO, EIEIO, that we were told to jump on over a year ago. Yes, I’m late, but it’s now urgent.