Why Is My Website Traffic Dropping? The Role of Google AI in 2025 and What You Can Do About It

Pretty cool, right? Google’s artificial intelligence delivers a concise summary response to your query. In some cases, an AI Overview response might be all a user needs for that particular internet search.

However, have you considered whether Google AI might be causing your company’s website traffic to drop? It’s worth looking into, as tech researchers and affected companies are sounding the alarm that Google AI is disrupting search engine optimization (SEO) and causing significant declines in click-through rates (CTRs) for organic and paid search. Just Google “Is Google AI impacting my website traffic?” and you’ll get dozens of results highlighting traffic declines ranging from 15-70%.

While such articles are disheartening to anyone responsible for their company’s digital marketing success, Google AI may not affect your website’s conversions and may provide some websites with higher CTRs. Much like Google algorithm adjustments require changing your SEO strategy, you can adapt your SEO to take advantage of the Google AI Overview.       

Why Is My Website Traffic Dropping?

If your website traffic is dropping, Google AI could be a factor. This game-changing SERP feature is causing users to adjust how they conduct their Internet searches, while the AI-generated summaries push organic results lower on the page. In some cases, Google AI provides users the answers they seek, eliminating their need to find additional information. In other cases, the AI Overview may cite and link competitors, lessening the likelihood of the user seeing your company on the SERP. 

Google AI’s impact on SERP and CTRs is not industry- or sector-specific, meaning all businesses must be aware of its disruptive potential. However, due to how Google AI works, its most significant impact is on CTRs for top-of-funnel queries.        

How Google AI Works in Search

Powered by Google’s AI Gemini language model, AI Overviews appear at the top of search results when the model determines that a generative AI response will be particularly helpful in addressing the user’s search query. Google AI generates these responses by synthesizing information from various Internet sources and includes related links to allow users to dive deeper into the material.   

For example, if you type “What are AI Overviews?” in a Google Search, an AI Overview prefaces the search results, providing a summary description and more detailed bullet points covering topics like “purpose,” “how they work,” “availability,” and “potential impact.” If that’s sufficient information for the user’s needs, they do not need to click on the provided links or examine other search results. 

Conversely, if the user needs more information, they can also query again to see what Google AI comes up with. For example, follow up by asking, “Will Google AI Overviews impact my website’s SERP?” Google AI’s response when we asked was, “Yes, [they] are likely to impact your website’s SERP visibility and potentially traffic,” followed by detailed bullet points on the causes behind the likely impacts.

The Good News: Conversions Aren’t Necessarily Dropping

Google AI Overviews primarily respond to research-oriented searches, which means they have a limited impact on conversion-ready traffic. First off, Google’s SERP is designed to protect its revenue streams, making AI Overviews less likely to appear with commercial queries. Second, when search results generate an AI Overview for a conversion-ready query like “Medical spa near me,” the surface-level summary often lacks depth, personalization, and organic motivating factors to encourage click-throughs. However, commercial AI overviews can include links to relevant sites, which Google claims can have higher click-through rates than organic results.

As it currently stands, top-of-funnel queries will most likely be impacted by an AI Overview as it may provide users with the answers they seek, reducing their need to visit external sites. Mid-to-bottom-funnel queries are currently less likely to generate a Google AI Overview response or may create a response that will not inhibit other search results and further click-throughs. Additionally, mid- to bottom-funnel users usually seek detailed information like product information, pricing, customer reviews, and other data that an AI overview may not provide. Many users also want to understand the company’s culture, style, trustworthiness, and other business attributes that an AI Overview may not adequately convey.      

Note that Google’s generative AI is “experimental,” quickly evolving, and—like Google algorithms—subject to change, with or without notice. Thus, companies must ensure that Google AI is factored in when updating their marketing strategy.  

What You Can Do: Adapt Your SEO Strategy for Google AI

As with the attention needed to take advantage of Google algorithms, a company’s digital marketing strategy must adapt its SEO tools to conform to the quirks of Google AI to help maintain SERP relevance and ensure continued conversions. You can take a dual-path track that strives to keep conversion-ready traffic strong and takes advantage of AI Overviews by considering the following: 

• Enhance site usability, trust signals, authoritative content, and clear calls to action to optimize existing traffic conversions. 
• Invest in Google Ads’ high-conversion keywords to capture traffic apart from Google AI and organic results.
• Diversify your reliance on Google by targeting conversion-ready traffic with email and social media marketing. 
• Enhance content for inclusion in AI Overviews by making it easily digestible and authoritative. 
• Optimize your website with technical SEO.

Optimize Your Website with Technical SEO

By optimizing your website with technical SEO, you can enhance the likelihood that Google AI Overviews will work in your favor rather than against you. Primary technical SEO strategies that can help your digital marketing efforts work with Google AI include:  

• Ensure that all website content is indexed correctly and crawlable. 
• Fully incorporate structured data (schema markup) in your website to help Google AI analyze your content for inclusion in AI Overviews. This is especially important with FAQs, product info, and how-to content. 
• Ensure your content is clear, concise, authoritative, and mobile device-compatible.
• Boost website speed, performance, and security.
• Use featured snippets and AI-friendly formats, like bullet points, FAQs, tables, and step-by-step lists.  
• Use analytical tools to track whether AI Overviews appear for your primary commercial keywords and, if so, ensure your pages are conversion-focused to capture clicks.

Final Thoughts

Google AI is a digital marketing game changer that may be taking a hit on your website traffic or otherwise be poised to disrupt your company’s digital marketing efforts. As noted above, despite declines in web traffic, you can preserve meaningful leads and conversions. You can adjust your marketing approach to respond to Google AI’s disruptive force on SERP to help make it work with you instead of against you. 

To future-proof your website and adapt your marketing approach to respond to the fast-evolving changes brought by AI, contact Lasso Up for a free website audit to assess your position in the new Internet search landscape. This audit may also answer your question about “why is my website traffic dropping?”