Howdy folks. I’m Dano Senior search strategist here at Overt Media, and this is the overt SEO brief. This brief is for Q2 2025, and for the first time we’re doing a very special episode covering just a single topic AI overviews. As always, if you like what you see, be sure to sign up for updates or follow us on our social channels. Alright, let’s get started. It’s been over a year now since Google launched AI overviews within search results. A lot of the initial speculation and forecasting from when it was first released weren’t entirely accurate in retrospect, but there are also areas where those first hunches weren’t far off either, but at over it we always like to look at real data and real studies and we’re constantly reviewing available reports. Well, the SEO platform, BrightEdge just released a fantastic report on the impact of AI overviews one year later.
We don’t actually use BrightEdge here and this isn’t an endorsement of their actual platform per se, but hats off to them. For this particular study, it was a real deep dive into where we are now with AI overviews and had some very compelling takeaways in full transparency and credit to the Bright Edge team. We’ll be linking to them in the description of the video, so be sure to go and download the full report for you to review later. While the full report covered eight major trends, we want to use this entire over at SEO brief to go over what we thought were the five most important takeaways. We’ll go over what the data shows, what it means for users, and provide a few actionable insights for marketing teams.
Alright, let’s get started
Finding One: Google search impressions are way up.
A lot of initial speculation. When AI first reached the masses suggested that people would begin to steadily abandon traditional search engines. Some perceived Google’s AI overviews as an ill-fated attempt at entering a crowded AI market in that it wouldn’t save the market share. However, one year later Google search impressions are up nearly 50%. AI overviews have been largely well-received by search engine users and have actually prompted even more engagement with the search engine and impression growth.
However, clicks have not kept pace with impression growth. As Google now directly generates AI based responses to more and more queries. Users are less compelled to click on actual websites. Click through rates for queries are down 30% year over year. That’s a worrying statistic. Organizations will have to re-benchmark some of their KPIs for SEO and learn how to find and surface AI traffic and analytics reports.
Finding Two: Highly technical verticals are top areas for AI overviews deployment.
AI overviews went from initially very small and specific deployments to being integrated into pretty much every vertical. Still, some verticals have seen dramatically more growth in AI overview exposure than others. The report shows healthcare, education, B2B, technology and insurance were among the verticals with the largest year over year growth. As BrightEdge points out, these are all areas with highly factual and structured content and topical spaces that see more complex queries, all factors that lend themselves to AI overviews. If your organization is in one of those broad verticals, you’ll need to rethink some prior assumptions about your content strategy and how to best optimize your website for these shifts. But even verticals not mentioned, but that are somewhat technical or see a lot of informational searches and questions, we’ll see increased integration of AI overviews into their topical spaces.
Finding Three: User query length is growing
So this one might be the most interesting finding in the entire study. As search engine users have become more confident in AI overviews for factual and technical content areas, we’re seeing their actual query lengths increase. Marketers have long distinguished between short tail and long tail queries by the word count length of the search string. Traditionally, short tail keyword rankings ruled on sheer volume while long tail rankings were valued for their lower competition levels and stronger conversion rates. But now we’re seeing a marked shift in user behavior as confidence in the quality of the AI overviews seems to be driving query length expansion queries with five to seven words are up significantly, and queries with more than seven words are up a staggering 700% versus one year ago. Hold that thought.
Finding Four: Technical language inclusion is also up
In related trends. Not only are users increasing their query lengths, they’re dramatically reshaping their search vocabulary. The inclusion of precise and vertical specific terminology in queries for healthcare, engineering, technology and finance among others is growing users no longer have to deep dive into industry forums or Reddit threads and can find technical explanations they trust within the AI overviews. In some spaces, technical language inclusion is up nearly 50% from a year ago. What does this mean for your website and content? There will always be value to short tail rankings and visibility, but as query length continues to grow in the coming years, organizations will need to adapt their content strategies accordingly. We’ve long advised clients to not chase keywords, but to chase users and user intents. There will soon be too wide a range of potential queries to even predict, nevermind optimize for, but your audiences and their needs will remain the same.
The key to creating content that’s better optimized for the growing long tail is less emphasis on the idea of traditional keyword strengths to begin with and more focus on the broader topics and entities that make up your topical space. And this can include context appropriate and vertical specific language. Even technical language finding five lower ranked pages are seeing more citations. Alright, let’s talk about the fifth and final finding. While some of the trends and findings covered so far may not be the most encouraging for marketers, particularly declining click-through rates. Once silver lining is that lower ranking content is now more cited in AI overviews than ever. Traditionally in organic search, more than 95% of clicks came from page one rankings, and if you weren’t at least on page two, you probably weren’t seeing any clicks at all. But for websites ranking for queries on page three in spots 21 through 30, there was a 400% increase in citations within those same AI overviews for websites. On pages four through 10, there was still a 200% lift in citations and some verticals. Over 80% of the citations are coming from websites that are outside even the top 100 organic results. This suggests that for websites lacking the backlink profile and link equity needed to traditionally compete in the organic listings, creating technically accurate and informative content can still pay dividends in the form of AI overview citations.
Final thoughts and takeaways?
There are some different technical considerations for AI when it comes to crawling and discovery, but the goals for AI optimization or a IO are going to be the same as SEO. Be visible and discoverable to the bots, be relevant to the user and query and demonstrate to both the users and bots that you have real subject matter expertise and topical authority within that vertical. And of course offer real value to users in your content. That’s a tried and true blueprint for search, regardless of what technology shifts we might be seeing. Alright, that’s it for this SEO brief. We hope that helps and we’ll see you next quarter. Bye folks.