If you have noticed that your organic traffic has been falling for the past few months, then there is a fair chance that the culprit is the "Google AI Overview".

As this article shows, you could be currently losing up to 30% of your non-brand organic search traffic and the bad news is that number will probably rise very fast, very soon

The Google AI Overview became a fixture in New Zealand some time in October 2024 and it now appears for the majority of searches (unless you actively exclude it). Google Search was already becoming more tricky as a way for content rich sites to receive web traffic due to 

• 4 x Google Ads or Google Shopping taking the top of the page

• Google Places and a map

• People also ask

• Etc etc

and all of the many ways that Google tries to monetise your search or keep you on the search page in the hope of monetising your next search. Throw in the constant algorithm adjustments that have decimated the traffic of some websites and content rich websites are having tough times.

I've been managing the SEO and analytics for a large NZ website for a number of years. The website is seasonal and it ranks very well for many query type searches ("how to", "when to" etc). By generating informative and detailed content, the site grew their organic search traffic almost 500% from 2015 to 2023. 

2024 organic search traffic was fractionally lower than 2023 and this was mainly due to a 14% fall in the final quarter of the year. For the first quarter of 2025, the fall is 22% from 2024.

The Google AI Overview is the major reason that the organic search traffic is falling. Digging in deeper, the biggest impact is around the "how" and "when" searches where the AI Overview appears consistently. Our website is often number 1 for these searches and it used to be the Featured Snippet prior to the AI Overview. Now the website appears in the AI Overview but of course that doesn't generate as many click-throughs to the website. 

For the "how" searches, comparing April to date with the same period of April 2024, clicks are down 36% and CTR is down 33%. Note that the average search ranking is actually better in April 2025 than 2024 - so rankings have improved but a third of traffic has been lost. The click-through rate for "how" searches has been steadily falling as shown below. 

For the "when" searches, the drop in click-through rate is not so dramatic which means that the AI Overview may not be appearing so often for these types of searches - or possibly it does appear but click-throughs are still happening.

So what can be done to reverse this decline in organic search traffic? Not much in the short term and possibly not much in the longer term either. Google might start to lose market dominance and it will be possible to get traffic from AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. However for this month, AI traffic is 0.08% of organic search traffic and again the whole point of these platforms is to give you an answer without you having to click through to another website. 

Maybe one day there will be a non-AI search engine that just shows the web pages that best match your search - we can dream.