Impressions in Search Console are steady, but you are seeing an AI Overview click drop, and a quick search shows a Google answer sitting above your results. That is an AI Overview, and you are not the first to suspect it. Before you decide it is to blame, check three things: that the drop is real, that the overview actually appears for the searches that bring you traffic, and that no technical problem is disguising itself as an AI Overview traffic loss.
One important point from Google’s documentation: there are no extra requirements and no special optimization to appear as a link inside the overview. The page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. So the work is the same as regular SEO, with more attention to what your content offers beyond the short answer. Here are the checks, in order.
Step one: confirm the drop in Google clicks is real
A drop in clicks from Google can come from many things: seasonality, a ranking change, a page that fell out of the index, or a real change in the results page. So start with the numbers:
- In Search Console, open Performance and then Search results.
- Turn on all four metrics: Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR and Average position.
- Compare against the matching period, ideally the same months last year, to cancel out seasonality.
- Go to the Queries tab and the Pages tab and look for where the drop is concentrated.
Here is a way to save time: export the query data for both periods (the Export button at the top of the report) and put them side by side in a spreadsheet. For each query you can then see whether impressions, position or only clicks changed, instead of looking at a site-wide average that hides what is really happening.
If both impressions and average position dropped, the problem is probably ranking and not the results page, and you should check whether the drop lines up with a Google update rather than an AI overview. If impressions and position are stable and clicks fell, you have a CTR drop, and that is where it is worth checking what changed on the results page itself.
How AI Overviews are counted in Search Console
To read the report correctly, you need to know how Google counts the overviews. According to Search Console’s help page on metrics:
- Click: a click on a link to an external page from inside an AI Overview counts as a click.
- Impression: the regular impression rules apply.
- Position: an AI overview takes up one position in the results, and every link inside it gets that same position.
Traffic from the overviews is included in the Web search type in the Performance report, and it has no separate filter there. Google also has a separate report, the Generative AI performance report, which shows impressions of links to your site inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. It shows impressions only, with no clicks.
In that report you can see whether you get impressions inside the overviews. If you do, your site is already cited as a source in some of them. If you do not, that does not necessarily mean there are no overviews for your keywords, only that your site is not linked from them.
Do AI Overviews appear for your searches?
According to Google’s help center, AI Overviews are a core Search feature that cannot be turned off, and the Web filter on the results page shows only text links, without features like AI overviews.
To find out what is happening for you, take the queries where CTR fell the most and search for them yourself, in a private browsing window and on mobile too. For each query, write down whether an overview appears, whether your site is linked in it, and what it answers.
Pay attention to the type of query. Informational questions like “what is” and “how to” are the natural home of a summary answer. Local service searches, such as “air conditioning repair near me”, are a completely different kind of query. So check what shows up for each type, and do not draw conclusions about the whole site from a single query.
Before you blame the overview: a technical problem in disguise
Not every drop that looks like an AI Overview effect is one. Before you change your strategy, check the basics:
- Page indexing: did important pages drop out of the index? A page that is not indexed cannot appear in the results, and it cannot appear as a link in an overview either.
- Robots tags: did someone add
noindexto a page, for example through a setting in your SEO plugin?
If either of these shows a problem, start there. I covered this in detail in the guide on why your website is not showing on Google.
Settings that block the use of your content
Some site owners think about blocking the overviews to “win back” the clicks. Before you do, it helps to understand what each setting does, based on Google’s documentation on robots tags:
- nosnippet: applies to all result types, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, and prevents your content from being used as direct input to the overviews. The cost is that the regular result will not show a snippet from the page either.
- max-snippet: limits how much of your content can be shown in results, and also how much can be used as direct input to AI Overviews and AI Mode.
- Google-Extended: this is not the way to block the overviews. Google says it does not affect whether your site is included in Search and is not used as a ranking signal in Search.
There is also a flip side: blocking does not automatically bring the clicks back. The overview can still appear for the query, just without your content and without a link to you. So make this decision only after you have checked the Generative AI performance report to see whether your site gets impressions from inside the overviews.
Your content answers exactly what the overview already answers
If a page brings traffic for a question whose answer is a line or two, the visitor can get it directly on the results page. The question to ask here is what your page has that the short answer does not.
Google says officially that its systems are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable information created for people, not content made to manipulate rankings. It also says you do not need special files, AI text files or special structured data to appear in its AI features. Those principles are exactly what stands behind GEO optimization, and if you want to understand them in depth, I wrote a separate guide.
On the page itself, you can do a few things:
- Add what only you can write: how you actually deliver the service, what the customer needs to prepare, what the process includes.
- Answer the next question, the one the visitor asks after getting the short answer.
- Connect each informational article to the relevant service page, so that people who do click through find the next step.
- Add examples, comparison tables or photos from your work, things that are hard to summarize in one line.
- Review the page title and meta description and make sure they explain why it is worth clicking, and do not just repeat the question.
What I cannot promise is that this will bring the clicks back. Google does not publish a figure like that, and what happens for each query depends on its results page. If you want to think about the bigger picture, I also wrote about how to bring organic traffic to your site.
In parallel, it is worth measuring what really matters to the business. Clicks are a means, and the goal is leads, calls and sales. If you do not currently measure how many leads come from the site and from which page, now is the time to start. You may find that the clicks you lost came mostly from informational articles that barely produced leads, or you may find the opposite. Either way, you will know where to put your time.
When to stop and call an expert
- The drop is sharp and concentrated in the service pages that bring leads, not only in informational articles.
- The Page indexing report shows important pages that dropped out of the index and you do not know why.
- You are considering adding nosnippet or max-snippet across the whole site and want to understand the cost first.
- You need to decide which pages to rewrite and which to leave, and you do not have time to go through every query.
If you checked and it is still unclear what is causing the drop, I can do it for you: analyze the data in Search Console, check the results pages and build a work plan for the pages that matter to you. You can contact me here.
Frequently asked questions
What is an AI Overview?
A summary that Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to sources that support the information.
How do you get into Google’s AI Overview?
According to Google, there are no extra requirements and no special optimization. The page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and you do not need special structured data.
Can you see clicks from AI Overviews in Search Console?
Clicks from the overviews are included in the Performance report under the Web search type, with no separate filter. The Generative AI performance report shows impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, without clicks.
Can you turn the overviews off?
Searchers cannot turn them off, but they can choose the Web filter after searching. A site owner can limit the use of their content with nosnippet or max-snippet, and that also affects the regular display in the results.
Will blocking Google-Extended keep my site out of the overviews?
No. Google says Google-Extended does not affect whether your site is included in Search and is not used as a ranking signal. Control over how your content is used in Search is done through robots tags.
Should you stop writing informational articles?
Not necessarily. A good informational article can still appear in the results, be linked from an overview and lead to your service page. What is worth checking is which articles actually bring leads, and investing in those and in your service pages before writing more articles on questions whose answer is a single line.
Is AI Mode the same thing?
Not exactly. According to Google, AI Mode expands on what AI Overviews do, with more advanced reasoning, and it breaks a question into subtopics and searches for each one. If you also want to understand the parallel side with competitors, I wrote a separate guide on optimizing for ChatGPT.