Rank for the Bots: How AI Overviews Rewrote the Rules of SEO
Key Takeaways
AI Overviews are reshaping how users find and engage with content.
Traditional rankings matter less; LLMs surface sources from across the SERP based on clarity and structure.
Winning search marketing in 2025 requires semantic depth and content built for generative search engines.
Two SEO Specialists
Kennedy and Jace started in the same seat. After graduating with an undergrad in marketing, they were ready to prove themselves as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Specialists at mid-sized digital agencies. They had the same training and job title, and even shared the same goals.
Fast forward a few years. Kennedy is managing SEO strategy for her entire company. Her team just landed a Fortune 500 contract. She’s been contacted by a recruiter from her dream job, making an attractive offer for her to lead their digital marketing team.
Jace? He didn’t make it past year three. After months of declining results, a few lost clients, and a team restructure, he was let go.
What happened?
Both were smart, worked hard, and came from the same background. But only one paid attention when the ground started to shift. The difference wasn’t skill or luck; it was an overlooked shift quietly changing everything about SEO.
The Shift Most SEOs Missed
In February 2025, over half of B2B tech search results featured AI Overviews, automated summaries at the top of Google’s SERP (search engine results page) that pull answers from a wide range of sources. Many SEOs didn’t care. After all, Google makes thousands of updates to its algorithm and SERP every year. In 2025, where AI advancement has become old news, AI Overviews didn’t seem like a big deal.
However, they were. AI Overviews have begun to change everything SEOs know about which sites get valuable traffic, and which ones don’t.
To stay competitive, traditional SEO tactics aren’t enough anymore. Digital marketers must make a shift in their mindset from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). As a digital marketer who wants to win in the AI age, you need to understand:
AI Overviews are everywhere and are rapidly expanding across all industries.
Rankings don’t matter like they used to—AI Overviews are surfacing content from a wider, more unpredictable pool of sites.
The secret to SERP success is to create content that LLMs recognize, rank, and feature.
AI Overviews Are Everywhere
To those not convinced that AI Overviews matter for your brand, think again. Since rollout on May 14, 2024, AI Overviews are dominating high-value search results. According to a study done by Ahrefs, AI Overviews now show up on 16% of all searches in the US.
% of Google Searches with AIO Present in 2025
Specific to industry, a February 2025 analysis by BrightEdge found that AI Overviews appeared in 83% of healthcare searches, 71% in education, and 57% in B2B tech; the three industries most known for accuracy, trust, and content depth. Even outside these categories, the trend is accelerating, especially in retail, travel, and real estate.
At the other end of the spectrum, sectors like entertainment and e-commerce have seen less adoption so far. However, digital marketers in those fields shouldn’t get comfortable. AI Overviews are expanding rapidly, and the more your content leans toward high-trust, high-stakes information, the more likely it is to be featured by Google’s AI.
So what does this mean for digital marketers?
It means that AI Overviews are now often the first impression users see on Google; not the #1 ranked page, or even pages in sponsored slots. This shift on the SERP has significantly impacted how people interact with Google. If you rank on the AIO, you might be getting more traffic than your top competitors.
Ranking on the AIO doesn’t guarantee everything. Jackson Hille, Director of SEO at 6sense, noted that despite appearing in the AI Overview, the featured snippet, and the organic top 10 for key search terms, his team saw little improvement in traffic.
He found that this was because users, using AI Overviews, were getting what they needed without actually clicking into any page.
As seen in the screenshot above, the AIO pulls content from relevant pages to create a summary for each term searched. While convenient for users, this means a potential reduction in the amount of traffic going to even the best-optimized, highest-ranked pages.
“Getting featured in the AIO doesn’t guarantee traffic. Still, not being featured isn’t an option for successful SEOs.”
Since the rollout of AI Overviews, some websites have seen drops in traffic from 15% to as severe as 70%, depending on industry.
Recent research shows why this might be. In a study conducted by Pew Research, it was found that when users encountered an AI-generated summary in their search, they clicked on a traditional result only 8% of the time. When no summary appeared, click-through rates nearly doubled to 15%.
Clicking links inside the AIO itself was even rarer. It happened in only 1% of all visits, meaning most users consume the summary and move on.
The bottom line is: if you’re not featured in the AIO, you’re not getting seen. Even if you are, you might not be getting clicked.
However, being featured is digital marketers’ best chance at maintaining traffic and conversions as AI takes over the SERP. Keep in mind, competitors are experiencing the same trend.
The opportunity for growth is through creating solid content that AI Overviews will perceive and recognize as useful, trustworthy, and shareable. If content is featured and linked in the AIO, it has the best chance of keeping traffic.
The good news is, even if your content hasn’t ranked high historically, AI Overviews have a loophole.
Rankings Don’t Matter Like They Used To
A recent Google SERP analysis showed that AI Overviews pull content from all over the rankings spectrum; not just the top 10, but as far down as rank 30 or even 50. This means that a blog post that was never optimized for traditional visibility could suddenly be featured, while a top-performing landing page gets ignored.
According to a study performed by Advanced Web Ranking, a top SEO thought leader, only 33.42% of the sources featured in AI Overviews rank in the top 10 organic results. Surprisingly, nearly 50% don’t even make the top 50.
Organic Rank of Sources Listed in the AI Overview
This indicates a complete reversal of how SEOs have operated for the last two decades.
Google is evolving its semantic understanding, or in other words, its ability to connect concepts and context, not just keywords. As a result, pages that satisfy user intent but lack traditional SEO signals can still be pulled into AI Overviews. Now, the SERP is becoming far less predictable, but potentially far more democratic.
However, AI Overviews aren’t selecting content at random. They’re choosing sources that match specific patterns: clear formatting, high-quality writing, semantic depth, and diverse media types.
So, yes, your blog post at rank #42 might outrank a #1 page inside the AIO. Your entire content library is now in play, but only if your content is structured in a way that large language models (LLMs) can understand and trust.
For digital marketers, this is both a challenge and an opportunity.
Speaking to the Bots
How should digital marketers optimize their content for LLMs?
Welcome to GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. GEO is the evolution of SEO, focused on optimizing content for generative engines. This is the strategy digital marketers and SEOs need to adopt to stay competitive in 2025.
Here are three top tips for operating under a GEO strategy.
1. Adopt a Multi-Pronged Media Strategy
LLMs like AI Overviews prioritize structured, rich content. Plain-text blogs aren’t authoritative enough to attract the LLMs. Instead, marketers should integrate a mix of text, visuals, tables, lists, video, and reviews, all layered within informative content.
2. Lead Semantic Niches
SEOs should implement a hub-and-spoke model to take over semantic niches in their industry. Think of it like a bicycle wheel. A hub-and-spoke model starts with a core “hub” topic or page built around a high-intent, authoritative topic. Then, build “spoke” pages that expand on subtopics and long-tail keywords through different formats like FAQs, video tutorials, comparison tables, blogs, and embedded demos. This model improves site structure, supports internal linking, and helps LLMs map topic clusters and determine topical authority.
When you build enough content around a semantic niche, LLMs begin to associate your brand with that specific cluster, increasing your chance of being cited in AI Overviews.
3. Reevaluate E-E-A-T
Google has long promoted E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) as the framework for ranking content. However, recent internal leaks have revealed that over 14,000 ranking factors in the algorithm didn’t expressly mention E-E-A-T at all.
Instead, the shift appears to be toward “page quality” and “effort score.” These signals are designed to measure how much meaningful work went into creating a page. What the algorithm classifies as “meaningful work” includes multimedia elements, expert collaboration, unique assets, and demonstrable utility. Reevaluating your E-E-A-T priorities will keep your brand on track to be featured.
The Risk of Staying Comfortable
The worst thing an SEO can do in 2025 is get comfortable following the same framework.
Remember the two SEOs?
Kennedy studied how AI Overviews were changing the SERP and adapted her strategy. She structured content differently, optimized for entities, and made her brand the source LLMs wanted to pull from.
Jace didn’t. He got comfortable waiting for results that never came. By the time he realized what was happening, it was too late to pivot.
If you want to win on the SERP of 2025, now’s the time to rethink how you optimize your content. Experiment with new strategies to find what works for your brand. AI Overviews are a door to growth. Whether your content gets featured or forgotten comes down to how soon you learn to open it.
Brands need partners who understand how to navigate this new landscape with confidence. At the BYU Marketing Lab, our team is already building strategies rooted in GEO principles, helping organizations stay in an AI-driven SERP. If your brand is ready to adapt and grow, we’re ready to help.
AI Search Marketing FAQS
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An AI search marketing strategy focuses on optimizing content for generative engines like Google’s AI Overviews. Instead of relying only on traditional rankings, it emphasizes semantic depth and multimedia elements, so LLMs can understand and cite your content.
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Because AI Overviews now dominate high-value search results, a strong AI search marketing strategy ensures your content is visible, trustworthy, and recognized by LLMs. Without it, even top-ranking pages may lose traffic and relevance on the evolving SERP.
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Traditional SEO focuses on ranking signals like keywords, backlinks, and metadata. An AI search marketing strategy prioritizes entity clarity, content structure, semantic relationships, and multimedia depth. These are elements that help generative engines interpret and feature your content.
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Yes. AI Overviews pull from a wide range of sources, not just top-ranked pages. With a strong AI search marketing strategy, brands of any size can gain visibility by producing high-quality, structured content LLMs trust.
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Monitor keyword movement in AI Overviews, brand citation frequency, traffic shifts, and SERP representation. Since clicks decline when AI summaries appear, success is measured not only through sessions but through visibility inside generative search experiences.
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