Why is my website traffic down since AI Overviews?

Almost certainly because your informational pages lost clicks — the blog posts and explainers answering a question a summary now answers in place — while your local pages held up. That distinction is the whole story, and most agents miss it by staring at one sitewide number and concluding the site is dying. It usually isn't. But fix the wrong thing and you'll spend a year writing more of exactly the content least likely to earn a visit.

What the data actually says

The most credible independent measurement is Pew Research Center's, which analyzed 68,879 real Google searches from 900 U.S. adults who shared their browsing data. When a results page carried an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits; when it didn't, 15% — nearly twice as often. Links inside the summary got clicked on just 1% of visits, and users ended their session more often on pages with a summary (26% vs. 16%).

The honest counterpoint, because you'll hear it from Google and it isn't nothing: Google's position is that total organic click volume to websites has been relatively stable year over year, with average click quality going up. Both can be true at once: per-query clicks fall where summaries appear, total volume holds because people search more. What changes is the mix — and the mix is where an agency site wins or loses.

Which of your pages actually lost the clicks

Pew's data also shows which searches trigger a summary — the part worth taping to your monitor. Around one in five Google searches in March 2025 produced one, but the rate varies enormously by phrasing:

Read the top row against the bottom row. The searches most likely to be resolved without a click are the ones your educational content was written to catch. The searches least likely — short, local, name-and-place — are the ones that bring an actual appointment. Blog sessions down while your home page, county pages and branded searches hold roughly flat is the normal shape of this, not a site failure.

How to confirm it's AI Overviews and not something else

Search Console is still the only real instrument here. On top of the impressions-versus-clicks read above, Google has added a generative AI performance report showing how many times links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Two caveats: it's rolling out to a subset of owners, so it may not be in your property yet, and it's a filtered view of the same Web search data.

Rule out the boring explanations first — in our experience they're at least as common as AI: a migration that dropped redirects, a plugin change that blocked crawlers, a seasonal trough (Medicare traffic is not flat across the year), an analytics change that redefined a session. For the other half of the picture, run the 10-minute prompt test.

Should you just opt out of AI Overviews?

You can now ask that seriously, which wasn't true a year ago. On June 3, 2026 Google announced a search generative AI control in Search Console: a setting that keeps a site out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. Google states it isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search, so unlike the old blunt instruments it doesn't cost you your normal listings. It's rolling out to a subset of owners, beginning in the UK, so most U.S. agents don't have the toggle yet.

Should you use it? For a licensed agent, no. Google is explicit that a site which opts out will not receive traffic or impressions from those features — you're not protecting a visit, you're deleting a mention. Publishers block because their product is the pageview. Yours is a policy sold after a conversation, and an answer naming your agency in front of someone in your county is what the site exists to produce. Same logic as not blocking AI crawlers, one layer up.

What changes about how you write

Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features is unusually blunt, and worth reading before you buy anything from anyone: there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode; a page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. Structured data is not required. Google specifically tells you to skip llms.txt files, artificial "chunking," and rewriting pages for machines.

We build schema into every page anyway — it earns rich results and forces a site to state plainly who it is — but we'd rather you hear the limit from Google than from a vendor. Nobody unlocks AI Overviews with markup. What the guidance asks for is a unique point of view and "expert or experienced takes that go beyond common knowledge." For an agency, that means four moves:

• Stop writing the commodity explainer. "What is Medicare Part B" belongs to the summary now, permanently. You will not win that page back.
• Write what only you can write. The plans actually sold in your counties, how your carriers' networks look locally, the mistake you watch clients make every October. A summary can't synthesize what nobody published.
• Front-load the answer anyway. Answer-first structure is how you get quoted with attribution when a summary appears — and how the reader who does click gets what they came for in one screen.
• Value the mention, not just the visit. Measure calls and booked appointments.

The reframe most agents need

An insurance agency website was never a traffic business. A publisher losing 40% of clicks loses 40% of revenue, because the pageview is the product. You sell a policy after a conversation — fifty visits from your county beat five thousand from strangers reading about Part B deductibles, and that was always true. AI summaries just stopped subsidizing the vanity number. The strategy doesn't change; the padding gets stripped out of it. Be the clearest, most verifiable, most local answer to what your market asks, keep publishing, and make it easy to book. That's the long version in our AEO guide for insurance agents and the short version of what we build into every site. Nobody can promise you a citation or a click. We can tell you which pages were never going to earn one again.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my website traffic down since AI Overviews?

For most insurance agency sites, the loss is concentrated in informational pages — blog posts and explainers answering questions like how Medicare enrollment works — because those are the queries that trigger an AI summary and get resolved inside it. Pew Research Center's browsing-data study found people clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits to a results page with an AI summary, versus 15% without. Short, local, name-and-place searches trigger summaries far less often, so an agency's home page and county pages usually hold up better than its blog. If every page fell at once, look for a technical or ranking cause before blaming AI.

Do AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?

For the queries where they appear, the independent measurement says yes. Pew Research Center, analyzing 68,879 real Google searches from 900 U.S. adults in March 2025, found a traditional result was clicked on 8% of visits when an AI summary was present and 15% when it wasn't, with links inside the summary clicked on just 1% of visits. Google's position is different in scope: it says total organic click volume has been relatively stable year over year and click quality has improved. Both can be true — the mix shifts, and informational queries absorb the loss.

How do I know if AI Overviews are the reason my traffic dropped?

Compare impressions against clicks in Google Search Console. The signature of AI-summary loss is impressions holding steady or rising while clicks and click-through rate fall on the same queries — you are still shown, just not clicked. Google has also added a generative AI performance report showing impressions for your site in AI Overviews and AI Mode, though it is rolling out to a subset of owners and may not be in your property yet. If impressions fell too, the cause is a ranking or indexing problem, not an AI summary.

Can I opt my website out of AI Overviews?

Google announced a search generative AI control in Search Console on June 3, 2026 that lets an owner keep a site out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover, and states the setting isn't used as a ranking or inclusion signal affecting other parts of Search. It began rolling out to a subset of website owners, starting in the UK, so most agents won't see the toggle yet. Google is explicit that sites which opt out will not receive traffic or impressions from those features. For a licensed agent that is the wrong trade: being named in the answer is what the site is for.

How do I get my agency cited in an AI Overview?

Google states there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that to be shown as a supporting link a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet. So the prerequisites are ordinary: crawlable, indexed, snippet-eligible, not blocked by nosnippet or max-snippet. Beyond that, Google's guidance points at a unique point of view and expert or experienced takes beyond common knowledge — for an agent, specifics about your counties, carriers and process that a national quote site can't write. No one can promise a citation.