Blog

Insights on the SEO shifts you need to know

As a partner in cutting-edge digital marketing and SEO, Merritt Group is closely watching how new AI-powered search features, especially AI overviews, are changing user behavior and click patterns. In this post we explain what AI overviews are, review recent data on how they impact click-through rate (CTR), and share what we’re doing at Merritt Group (and what you should do) to optimize for this shift in AI engine optimization.

What are AI Overviews?

Also known as AIOs, AI Overviews are automatically generated summary boxes in search engine result pages (SERPs) that attempt to answer a user’s informational query directly, often without requiring the user to click further. They are part of what’s being called generative search features.

Because they change how and where people find answers, they also alter what CTR looks like for organic results, paid ads, and brands that are mentioned in the overviews.

Key Findings: How AI Overviews Impact CTR

Insights from a recent Seer Interactive study (“How AI Overviews Are Impacting CTR: 5 Initial Takeaways”) provide hard data on what’s happening.

Here are the main takeaways:

Metric	Effect when AI Overview is present vs not present*
Paid CTR	Drops by ~12 percentage points when an AIO appears in the SERP.
Organic CTR	Declines by ~70% if an AI Overview is present. For example, average organic CTR might be ~2.94% without an AIO vs ~0.84% with one.
Organic CTR when brand/content is cited in AI Overview	Some lift: when included as the source for the overview, CTR increases, e.g. from ~0.6% to ~1.08%.
Types of queries that trigger AI Overviews	Longer, question‐based queries more often. For instance, queries starting with “what,” “how,” etc., and those with 4+ words are more likely to generate an AIO.

Note: Organic ranking didn’t differ significantly between the groups compared (those with and without AIOs), so the drop in CTR seems more due to the presence of the overview itself rather than worse ranking.

What This Means for SEO Strategy & CTR

The rise of AI Overviews means both challenges and opportunities. Here’s how we’re approaching it and what you should consider:

1. Visibility matters: Being a source for the AI Overview gives you extra visibility in the SERP, which can help recoup some of the CTR lost to the summary itself. At Merritt Group, our Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) services focus on structuring content so it’s suitable to be selected as that source. 
2. Optimize content for question-based and long queries: Since AI Overviews show up more for queries like “how…,” “what…,” and those with 4+ words, we recommend strengthening content that answers those directly. 
3. Monitor your metrics closely: Because changes in CTR (organic and paid) will be tied to whether overviews appear in the SERP for your target keywords, we’re refining how we track performance: combining Search Console data, paid search metrics, and GEO / AI overview tracking to see where losses are and where gains are possible. 
4. Rethink paid strategy for queries often triggering AIOs: With paid CTR dropping significantly when overviews are present, ad spend needs to be more surgical. If many queries you target are likely to trigger AI Overviews, it may be more cost-efficient to create high quality content (owned content) to aim for the overview citation rather than betting solely on paid placement. 
5. Balance brand awareness and direct clicks: Even if an AI Overview means fewer clicks to your page, the presence of your name in that overview still builds brand trust. That visibility in the SERP can help your longer-term SEO and user recognition. So part of the strategy is balancing content that aims for citation (visibility) vs. content optimized purely for clicks.

What Merritt Group Is Doing: Our Approach to AI Engine Optimization

At Merritt Group, we’ve developed a structured approach that folds the above lessons into our services:

• Through our AI Engine Optimization efforts, we proactively research which high-value queries for your business are likely to trigger AI Overviews. 
• We audit existing content to see whether it’s in good shape to become a source for an overview (clear, authoritative, well structured, answer-oriented). 
• We integrate GEO into our SEO agency offering, applying best practices for both traditional SEO and AIO-friendly content. 
• We adjust paid strategy, keyword targeting, and ad copy to be aware of the presence of AI Overviews, ensuring that ad spend is optimized given the shifting SERP layout. 
• Continuous A/B testing and measurement: tracking CTR drops, but also lift when your content is cited.

What You Should Do Next

Here are some action items to consider:

• Identify which of your current high-value keywords are seeing AI Overviews in SERPs. 
• Audit your content to see whether it’s formatted and positioned in a way that Google could use you as a source. 
• Consider enhancing content to answer questions directly, using structured data, clear headings (“What is…,” “How to…,” etc.), and concise authoritative language. 
• Reallocate part of your SEO and paid efforts toward queries likely to trigger AIOs, balancing visibility and clicks. 
• Run experiments: one version of content optimized for standard ranking vs. another optimized for getting cited in AI Overviews, and compare performance.

The Bottom Line: Adapting to AI Overviews

AI Overviews are changing the game for how users interact with search results. They tend to reduce traditional organic and paid CTR when present, but being included as a source in those overviews can mitigate losses and even lead to gains in visibility and clicks.