Do AI Overviews actually kill your clicks? An honest Australian view

Ask around and you’ll hear two versions of the AI Overviews story. One says organic search is dead and clicks have collapsed. The other says nothing’s really changed. Both are wrong, and the truth — the useful, un-panicked version — sits in between. Here’s how we’d frame it for an Australian small business trying to decide whether to worry.

What AI Overviews actually changed

AI Overviews are the AI-generated answers Google now shows above the traditional blue links for many queries. When one appears, the searcher can get their answer without scrolling — which, for some searches, means fewer people click through to any website at all.

Industry studies have consistently found that when an AI Overview appears, click-through rates on the results below it drop. The size of the drop varies a lot by query type, and that variation is the whole story.

The drop isn’t evenly spread — and that’s the point

The businesses panicking are mostly looking at the wrong queries. Where AI Overviews hurt clicks most are simple informational questions — “what is a tax file number”, “how many ml in a cup” — the kind of query where the searcher wanted a fact, not a business. If your traffic was built on answering trivia, yes, that traffic is under pressure.

Where AI Overviews change far less is commercial and local intent — “physiotherapist Norwood”, “conveyancer near me”, “cost to replace a hot water system Adelaide”. When someone’s looking to hire or buy, an AI summary doesn’t finish the job; they still need to choose a business, and they still click. That’s the traffic most small businesses actually depend on, and it’s the most defensible.

So the honest answer to “do AI Overviews kill your clicks?” is: it depends entirely on what you were ranking for. Lose sleep if your visibility was built on generic information. Lose much less if it was built on people looking to buy what you sell.

What this means for how you invest

A few practical conclusions we’d stand behind:

• Stop chasing pure-information traffic as an end in itself. It was always the softest kind of visit, and it’s the kind AI Overviews absorb. Traffic that doesn’t lead toward an enquiry was never worth much.
• Double down on commercial and local intent. The searches where someone is choosing a provider are more resilient and more valuable. This is the same reason we argue for ranking for the question a buyer is actually asking, not just the product name.
• Watch your own clicks, not the headlines. The only AI Overviews data that matters to you is yours — whether your impressions are holding but clicks are slipping on specific queries. That shows up clearly in Search Console, and it’s a far better guide than any national average.
• Position numbers matter less than they did. Ranking well has always been about the clicks it earns, not the position itself — something we covered in Australian CTR-by-position data. AI Overviews just make that even truer.

The calm version

AI Overviews are real and they’re reshaping the top of the results page. But “search is dead” is a headline, not a strategy. For most Australian small businesses, the traffic that pays the bills — people actively looking to hire or buy locally — is the traffic that holds up best. The move isn’t to panic; it’s to make sure your visibility is built on those searches in the first place.

If you’re not sure whether AI Overviews are actually costing you clicks — as opposed to costing someone else theirs — that’s a specific question we can answer from your own Search Console data. And if you’d rather get on the front foot and actively earn a mention inside those AI answers, that’s what AI Search Optimisation (AIEO) is about. We’re happy to take a look.