How AI Overviews Are Changing B2B Organic Traffic

What AI Overviews are doing to organic clicks

AI Overviews reduce organic click-through because they answer the query directly on Google's results page. For B2B websites, the result is fewer visits from informational searches, even when rankings stay the same.

Google AI Overviews are generated summaries that appear above the classic organic results for many queries. They pull from several web pages, write a combined answer, and attach links to the sources they used.

of visits with an AI summary led to a click on a traditional result

8%

of visits without an AI summary led to a click on a result

15%

of visits with an AI summary included a click on a link inside it

1%

Those figures come from Pew Research Center's analysis of real browsing data from US adults in March 2025. Users who saw an AI summary were also more likely to end their browsing session entirely after the search.

How big is the drop?

Independent datasets point the same way. Ranking first is still valuable, but a first position under an AI Overview delivers noticeably less traffic than the same position did before.

Gartner had already forecast in early 2024 that traditional search engine volume would fall 25% by 2026 as people move to AI chatbots and virtual agents. AI Overviews bring part of that shift inside Google itself.

Which B2B queries are hit hardest

Not every query is equally exposed. The pattern we see across corporate sites is consistent: the more a query asks for a definition or general explanation, the more an AI summary can satisfy it on the results page.

For an oil and gas services company or a logistics provider, much of the blog traffic built over the years sits in the top two rows. That traffic was rarely the source of qualified leads, but it supported awareness and remarketing audiences. Expect it to shrink.

What B2B teams should do now

1. 1.Segment Search Console data by query intent so you can see where clicks are really falling.
2. 2.Make key pages citable: answer-first paragraphs, specific numbers, clear sources, and structured data.
3. 3.Invest in bottom-of-funnel pages — services, industries, capabilities, case studies — where buyers still click.
4. 4.Build branded demand through thought leadership, events, and LinkedIn so more searches start with your name.
5. 5.Allow AI crawlers and track referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and gemini.google.com separately.

“The click you lose on a definition query was rarely a buyer. The click you must not lose is the one on your services page.”

How to get cited in AI Overviews

Google states there are no extra technical requirements for AI Overviews: a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. Beyond that, the pages that get cited tend to share a few traits.

• •A direct answer near the top of the page, in one or two plain sentences.
• •Specific, verifiable facts — figures, standards, dates — with sources.
• •Clear heading structure that mirrors the questions buyers ask.
• •Visible author expertise and recent publish or update dates.
• •Fast, server-rendered HTML that crawlers can read without JavaScript.

Rethinking how you measure SEO

Sessions were always a weak proxy for B2B value. With AI Overviews, they become actively misleading: traffic can fall while pipeline holds steady or grows.

Report these to leadership early, before a traffic chart sparks a panic. The goal of organic search in B2B was never visits; it was qualified conversations.