Google AI Overviews: what they mean for your website traffic

Many UAE business owners have seen the same pattern in their analytics recently: rankings look stable, impressions are up, yet clicks from Google are flat or falling. Very often the explanation sits at the top of the results page, in a box labelled "AI Overview".

This article explains what AI Overviews are, which kinds of traffic they affect, how to check the impact on your own site and what to do about it, without the panic that often surrounds the topic.

What are Google AI Overviews?

AI Overviews are summaries generated by Google's Gemini models that appear at the top of some search results, answering the query directly and linking to the web pages used as sources. They grew out of Google's Search Generative Experience experiment and rolled out publicly from May 2024, expanding to many more countries and languages since.

Google also offers AI Mode, a more conversational search experience where users can ask follow-up questions. Both draw on Google's search index, which is why ordinary SEO still matters: the sources cited are generally pages Google already considers relevant and trustworthy.

Which searches show AI Overviews?

AI Overviews appear most often on informational and multi-part questions, and less often on navigational, transactional and local searches. Google decides query by query, so the only way to know for your business is to check your own keywords.

If most of your organic traffic comes from blog articles answering general questions, you are more exposed than a business whose traffic comes from service and location pages.

How much traffic do AI Overviews take away?

There is no single figure that applies to every site. Publishers and industry analyses have widely reported lower click-through rates on informational queries where an overview appears, but the effect varies a great deal by topic, query and how well the page itself is cited. Treat any universal percentage you read with caution and measure your own site instead.

It is also worth separating traffic from value. A blog post that attracted thousands of visits from people wanting a quick definition may have produced very few enquiries. Losing some of those clicks hurts reporting more than revenue. Losing clicks on "cost" and "best provider" pages is a different matter.

How do you check the impact on your own site?

Use Search Console and your analytics together, and compare like with like. Google includes clicks and impressions from AI Overviews in the normal web search figures in Search Console, rather than reporting them separately, so you have to infer the effect.

1. Compare periods carefully. Look at the same months year on year to avoid seasonal distortion, especially around Ramadan, summer and the Q4 peak.
2. Split by page type. Group URLs into blog, service, location and product pages. Check which group's click-through rate has changed.
3. Look for the pattern. Stable positions, rising impressions and falling CTR on question queries strongly suggest overview impact.
4. Check the results manually. Search your top 20 queries on mobile in the UAE, in private browsing, and note which show an overview and whether you are cited.
5. Follow the money. Compare organic leads, calls and WhatsApp enquiries, not just sessions.

How do you get cited in an AI Overview?

Pages cited in AI Overviews tend to rank well already and answer the specific question clearly. There is no separate submission process or special markup. What helps:

• A direct answer to the question in the first sentence under a relevant heading.
• Supporting detail that goes beyond the obvious: steps, conditions, local specifics, costs in AED where appropriate.
• Clean structure with descriptive headings, lists and tables that are easy to extract.
• Strong page experience and indexability; the page must be eligible to show a snippet.
• Clear authorship and expertise, particularly on health, finance and legal topics.

These are the same principles behind winning featured snippets and "People also ask" boxes, which is why AEO work carries over well.

Can you stop Google using your content in AI Overviews?

Only by limiting snippets. Controls such as the nosnippet and max-snippet robots directives, or the data-nosnippet attribute on parts of a page, also apply to AI Overviews. The Google-Extended setting does not remove you from AI Overviews; it relates to using content for Gemini models outside Search. For almost every business, opting out does more harm than good, because it also restricts how your pages appear in normal results.

What should UAE businesses do next?

Adjust the plan rather than abandoning SEO. A sensible response in order of priority:

1. Protect and strengthen commercial pages: services, locations, pricing explainers, comparisons and case-style process pages.
2. Rewrite high-impression informational articles so they are the best cited source, with a clear answer and depth an overview cannot fully replace.
3. Build brand demand through social media, video and PR, so more people search for you by name.
4. Improve conversion on the visits you do get: fast mobile pages, visible WhatsApp and call buttons, short forms.
5. Report on leads and revenue alongside traffic, so the team is judged on what matters.

The right balance depends on your sector. A clinic or law firm publishing health or legal explainers should expect more overview exposure and put extra care into expert authorship and review dates. A home services or restaurant business relies more on the map pack and reviews, where AI Overviews appear less often. An e-commerce store should watch product research queries, such as "best air purifier for Dubai apartments", where overviews increasingly summarise options before shoppers click through to a store.

Whatever the sector, avoid knee-jerk reactions such as deleting older blog posts or cutting SEO budgets entirely. Pages that lose clicks can still earn citations, support internal links and build the topical depth that helps your commercial pages rank.

How Upscaleads can help

We analyse your Search Console data to show where AI Overviews are affecting you, then rework priority pages through our SEO and GEO services so they are more likely to be cited. Contact us if your clicks have dropped and you want to know why.