Since debuting in 2024, AI Overviews (AIOs) have become a regular feature on Google's search engine results page (SERP). These summaries offer users quick, concise answers directly within the search results, improving the overall experience while highlighting reputable sources at the top of the page.
Alphabet, Google's parent company, has committed $85 billion to advancing AI, introduced a new AI Mode, and expanded the reach of AIOs. Combined with Google's overwhelming share of the search engine market, these developments are reshaping how people search online. In this AI-driven landscape, one key question emerges: Does search engine optimization (SEO) still matter, or has it lost its relevance?
Current AIO Landscape
Google has seen a dramatic rise in AIO usage, with users embracing the feature for its simplified search experience. By the second quarter of 2025, AIOs were serving over 2 billion users each month, spanning more than 200 countries and territories and supporting 40 languages.
AIOs and Their Impact on Search Behavior
A comprehensive study by Ahrefs revealed that AIOs appear in at least 12.8% of all Google searches by volume. Over time, the range of words triggering AIOs has grown significantly. Research by GrowthSRC Media, which examined more than 200,000 keywords across multiple industries, found that the number of keywords associated with AIOs surged from 10,000 in August 2024 to over 172,000 by May 2025 after the March 2025 Core Update. Longer queries and those with informational intent are more likely to activate AIOs compared to shorter queries or searches with other intents.
As AIOs occupy more space on the search engine results page (SERP), whether on desktop or mobile, organic listings are pushed farther down. This shift has accelerated zero-click searches, reducing the average clickthrough rate for top-ranking pages when AIOs are present. By providing answers directly on the SERP, AIOs often eliminate the need for users to visit external sites, which many websites report as a source of lost traffic from Google.
However, being featured in an AIO can have a positive impact. Links included in AIOs tend to receive more clicks than if the page appeared as a traditional web listing for the same query. Google has also observed that clicks originating from AIO-enhanced SERPs are of higher quality, with visitors spending more time on the destination site.
SEO in the Age of AIOs
Appearing on the first search engine results page (SERP) does not guarantee that a website will be included in the AI Overview (AIO). The example below illustrates this. Although Evalueserve ranks among the top three links for the query ‘What is SEO and Content Marketing Service,’ it is not listed among the sources featured in the AIO.
This demonstrates that in today’s AI-first search environment, determining a website’s position is far from straightforward. Teams must rethink how they research and strategically place keywords within content, while also learning what AI models prioritize when generating responses. Traditional SEO must evolve to include a new approach often referred to as ‘Answer Engine Optimization.’
This does not mean abandoning traditional practices entirely. There is still considerable overlap between strategies that help a site rank in Google’s organic results and those that improve visibility in AIOs. Below is a basic checklist of best practices every website should follow:
- Allow crawling in robots.txt and through any CDN or hosting infrastructure so search engines can index the site and rank it in results. The robots.txt file instructs search engines which pages to crawl and which to avoid using ‘allow’ and ‘disallow’ directives.
- Deliver an excellent page experience. Focus on metrics such as loading speed, responsiveness, security, and mobile optimization. Ensure that key content is available in text form and provide clear, concise answers to the main questions addressed on the page. Support text with high-quality images and videos.
- Confirm that structured data aligns with visible text on the page. Adding structured data can create richer search results that encourage user engagement.
- Apply on-page SEO techniques to optimize elements such as title tags, meta descriptions, URL slugs, and heading tags.
- Build links at both the domain and page level for critical pages and the site overall. Make sure content is easily discoverable through internal linking.
In addition to these steps, early research suggests several practices that can improve the likelihood of appearing in AIOs:
- Optimize content for long-tail keywords to increase the chances of being featured in AIOs. These overviews are designed to address more complex queries, which often include long-tail keywords.
- When creating content with informational intent, such as defining a term, craft the definition using language similar to what appears in AIOs to improve the chances of being cited as a source.
- Keep content updated to maintain freshness. Search engines increasingly favor fresh content because it is considered more relevant and useful to users.
- Invest in brand-building efforts to boost visibility across lists, review sites, forums, and related platforms. This is critical since user-generated content from sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Quora frequently appears in AIOs.
- Expand coverage to related topics because AIOs evolve as users refine their queries.
- Continue building quality backlinks. Strong backlink profiles influence top rankings, which reinforce a site’s trustworthiness and play a key role in AI visibility.
A Final Word
The growing popularity of AIOs is evident from the fact that they now drive more than 10% additional queries globally for the types of searches that display them, and this trend is expected to continue. This growth comes despite concerns about occasional inaccuracies or biased information.
Because the feature is still new and evolving rapidly, its long-term impact on SEO remains uncertain. However, adapting to this shift from traditional SEO to advanced strategies requires sophisticated tools and expertise. This is where Evalueserve can help. We are a one-stop shop for SEO and content marketing services, which include keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and content creation to boost website visibility and drive traffic. Our solutions include SEO audits and strategic guidance, SEO-driven content development, and an SEO suite that provides a dashboard with aggregated data that can be converted into actionable insights. We ensure that a site’s SEO fundamentals are strong so that, regardless of how AI-driven search evolves, our clients always emerge on top.
