Seven leading SEO experts and publisher audience strategists on changing their approach due to Google Search's AI Overviews, how it may impact traffic, and more
Google's generative AI search feature is here to stay, but will it actually impact how digital outlets do business? X: @stevewbeales , @p0st_news , @decka227 , and @glenngabe LinkedIn: Tristan Loper , Bryan Flaherty , and Will Flannigan See also Mediagazer X: Steven Wilson-Beales / @stevewbeales : A nice series of interviews by @decka227 on how newsrooms are thinking about Google's AI Overviews. https://www.niemanlab.org/... Chris Brown / @p0st_news : The elephant in the room here is that *if* AI Overviews results improve, and are based on reliable info, then they are a very good product which a large proportion of casual news audiences will use instead of news websites https://www.niemanlab.org/... Andrew Deck / @decka227 : AI Overviews are here to stay. Google announced this month it had launched the search feature in six new countries. But are Overviews actually changing how news publishers do business? I asked seven audience directors and SEO experts for @niemanlab. https://www.niemanlab.org/... Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : Interesting quotes -> Here's how 7 news audience directors are thinking about Google's AI Overviews And I wrote a post on SER about the challenges with tracking AIOs in Search Console... See the quote below from one of the directors: https://www.niemanlab.org/... via @NiemanLab [image] LinkedIn: Tristan Loper : For now these overviews seem useful for curious searches — “Ask Jeeves”-type queries to fact check my knowitall uncle at the dinner table in fewer clicks. … Bryan Flaherty : Whenever a platform, search or otherwise, makes a change it's right for news orgs to be worried about the impact. … Will Flannigan : In my experience, AI Overviews mostly pop up in non-newsy or commercially focused queries, spaces where news publishers shouldn't rely on for audience anyway … See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This captures an early publisher response to AI-generated answers in search: the immediate concern is less about headline news queries than about informational and commercial searches that can be resolved without a site visit. An earlier review of AI search tools found their usefulness varied by query type, underscoring why publishers were still assessing exposure rather than treating traffic effects as settled.
The issue became more consequential as Google continued to make AI-led search interaction a product direction, including an experimental AI Mode for complex questions and later broader AI Mode availability. That progression shifts the question from a single search-feature change to how publishers measure and earn from discovery in an answer-first interface.
First-order effects
- Publishers and SEO teams must reassess which query categories can lose clicks when AI Overviews provide a sufficient answer, while preserving focus on searches where users still need original reporting or a destination site.
- Measurement becomes an immediate operational problem: Glenn Gabe's concern about limited AI Overviews visibility in Search Console makes it harder to attribute traffic changes or optimize around the feature.
Second-order effects
- Audience and revenue teams may place greater value on direct, habitual, and branded traffic if casual fact-finding searches produce fewer outbound visits.
- SEO vendors and internal search teams are pushed from ranking-focused workflows toward monitoring inclusion and presentation in AI answers—a shift later reflected in tools aimed at visibility in AI search summaries.
Third-order effects
- If answer-first search becomes the default for more informational queries, search distribution can shift from a click marketplace toward an attribution-and-access marketplace, with publishers seeking clearer controls and measurement from platforms.
- The long-run effect depends on whether AI answers reliably satisfy users and how prominently they link sources; that uncertainty leaves publisher traffic risk uneven across content types rather than uniform.
The trend: This is one early signal of answer-engine economics, in which search platforms increasingly synthesize publisher information before deciding whether to send users onward.