AUGUST 4, 2025 — Forbes cited our AI Overviews research in a recent article about how small businesses should readjust their marketing strategies in light of AI in search results. It's thrilling to see our data included alongside citations from respected sources like Pew Research Center and Forrester.
Our research showed a 70% decline in organic click-through rates when AI Overviews are present in the search results — as well as a negative impact on paid click-through rates, albeit less significant. These findings are based on AIO tracking for 100+ clients and monitoring of 7.8k queries.
AI Overviews continue to disrupt traditional search behavior of users, as confirmed by independent research from Pew Research and Ahrefs. We've been tracking our AI Overviews data for 15 months, and the trend lines show these changes in where and how users are asking questions are likely permanent shifts.
It may be time for your business to shift strategies and focus more on optimizing for AI Overviews — or, conversely, to focus on keywords without AI Overviews attached. Whether and how you optimize for AIOs will depend on your content strategy or what queries your campaigns prioritize. The main takeaway: We recommend digging into your own data to see how these changes in search behavior are affecting your performance and consider adjusting your digital marketing efforts to account for the impact of AI.
Another noteworthy finding from our research involves how AIOs impact paid click-through rates: "AI Overviews were only present in 7% of our paid dataset, and 2.2% of total impressions, indicating that ads and AIOs are rarely paired in the search results. When they do, paid CTR nearly halves, suggesting AIOs may shift user behavior and distract clicks that otherwise go to paid ads."
Read the full Forbes article: How Small Business Can Survive Google's AI Overview
A version of this article was also published on Forbes Africa: How Small Business Can Survive Google's AI Overview
View our cited analysis of AIO: How AI Overviews Are Impacting CTR: 5 Initial Takeaways
Check out our latest AIO research from September 2025: AIO Impact on Google CTR: September 2025 Update