Here’s the brutal truth: 57% of searches now feature AI Overviews as of June 2025, and many users never click through to websites anymore. If your business relies on Google traffic, everything just changed.
The Numbers Don’t Lie – Your Traffic Is Under Attack
The data coming out of 2025 is gobsmacking. AI Overviews are on the rise: 13.14% of all queries triggered AI Overviews in March 2025. That’s up from 6.49% in January 2025, and by June, we’re seeing them in over half of all searches.
But here’s what really matters for your bottom line: SEOs have already seen a correlation between increased AI Overviews and decreased website traffic, with some sites losing 20–60% of their traffic. That’s not a gentle decline, that’s a cliff drop.
Meanwhile, Australian businesses are expected to spend $1.5 billion on SEO services in 2025, up 12% from 2024. Yet many are doubling down on strategies that no longer work. It’s like buying more horse feed when everyone else has moved to cars.
We’ve found the shift particularly brutal for businesses that relied heavily on informational content. 88.1% of queries that trigger an AI Overview are informational, meaning if you’ve built your traffic on answering common questions, Google’s AI is now doing that job for you, without sending visitors your way.
The timeline for change is accelerating. Digital marketing and SEO-related topics may start driving more visitors from AI search to websites than from traditional search by early 2028, according to our research. That’s not some distant future, it’s three years away.
Why Your Current SEO Strategy Is Failing
Let’s be honest about what’s happening here. The traditional SEO playbook; target keywords, create content, build links, rank in the top 3, is becoming less relevant by the day.
AI Mode presents a “re-imagining of Search” by allowing users to ask highly detailed, multi-part, or follow-up questions in a conversational, chat-like interface. Users can now get comprehensive answers without ever visiting your website.
Think about how you search when you’re in a hurry. You want the answer, not a list of websites to check. Google’s AI gives users exactly that, and it’s working. Google reported that AI Overviews have led to a 10% increase in usage for queries where they appear, especially for more complex, multi-part, or multimodal questions.
The challenge runs deeper than just fewer clicks. Keywords that trigger AI Overviews tend to be slightly longer in word count, and more likely to include clarifications, comparisons, or definitions, classic informational query types. If your content strategy has focused on these types of queries, you’re directly in the firing line.
Here’s what we’re seeing in our campaigns: businesses that spent years optimising for “how to” content and FAQ-style queries are watching their traffic evaporate. The AI simply answers these questions directly, leaving no reason for users to click through.
The old metrics don’t even make sense anymore. Ranking #1 for a keyword means nothing if the AI Overview sits above you and answers the user’s question completely.
The New Rules – Welcome to AIO (AI Overview Optimisation)
Smart businesses are already pivoting to what we call AIO: AI Overview Optimisation. This isn’t just SEO with a new name; it’s a fundamentally different approach to content strategy.
Unlike traditional SEO which focuses on getting your website to rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), AI search optimisation focuses on:
- Being cited or referenced within AI-generated responses
- Delivering content that’s easy for LLMs to parse and summarise
- Establishing trust so your site is chosen as a reliable source
The goal shifts from ranking to being cited. You want Google’s AI to mention your business, quote your expertise, and position you as the authority. The most commonly cited website in Google AI Overviews is Quora, according to our AI search study. Reddit comes in second place. Why? Because they provide specific, quotable answers to niche questions. But let’s have a bit of a look what real success looks like on Google…
Dominating Google’s new AI-enhanced Search Results
This is one of our clients. Within a very short space of time, we’ve been able to pivot them to dominate strategically-chosen keywords. In this case, we have them appearing an amazing 7 times for just one of the search phrases. You practically can’t click around in this section without being exposed to them.
So the companies succeeding in this new landscape focus on creating what we call “quotable chunks”, specific, authoritative statements that AI can easily extract and cite. To achieve this, we analyse a whole array of Google-side data, and craft focused, expert answers to very specific problems.
We’re also seeing success with businesses that optimise for the “People Also Ask” sections. When trying to rank on Google, it’s always been a sound strategy to create content by first noting the phrases you want to rank for, then typing that keyword into Google, and seeing what is listed under “people also ask”, and then creating content to answer those questions. But now, paying attention to these questions is absolutely more important than ever.
The technical side matters too. Structured data and content that’s easy for AI to parse become critical. Structured data is useful for sharing information about your content in a machine-readable way that the AI systems can consider and make pages eligible for certain search features and rich results.
What Smart Australian Businesses Are Doing Right Now
The businesses that are thriving in this new environment share some common strategies. First, they’ve shifted their mindset from traffic volume to traffic quality. We have seen that the average AI search visitor (tracked to a non-Google search source like ChatGPT) is 4.4 times as valuable as the average traditional search visitor.
We’re also working with a Brisbane manufacturing company to completely pivot their content strategy. Instead of creating broad industry guides, we now often focus on highly specific technical questions that only they can answer. The AI citations position them as the expert, and when tradies need a particular solution, it means their products are far more likely to be recommended as a solution, so they know exactly who to call and buy from.
Expert blogs, in-depth technical sites, and educational platforms can see their visibility increase by 15 to 45%. AI favours their documented expertise when composing responses on complex topics. The key is demonstrating genuine expertise, not just aggregating information.
Another strategy that’s working is building brand authority across multiple channels:
- Media mentions across trusted publications
- Schema-enriched pages with structured data
- First-party research that establishes expertise
- Expert quotes and branded citations
We typically recommend our clients start creating original research and data. AI systems love citing fresh statistics and insights. One of our retail clients conducted a survey about Australian shopping habits post-COVID and created an infographic. That single piece of content gets cited in AI responses weekly, driving highly qualified traffic.
The conversation around marketing strategy has completely changed. It’s no longer enough to rank well, you need to become the voice AI systems turn to for answers in your industry.
Your Next Move: Adapt or Get Left Behind
Here’s the thing about major shifts in digital marketing, the businesses that adapt early get the biggest advantage. While your competitors are still trying to rank for keywords the old way, you can be building the authority and citation patterns that AI systems prefer.
The transition isn’t optional. If you aren’t using AI in your daily strategy, you risk falling behind within the next 12–18 months. But it’s also an opportunity. Businesses that understand AIO principles can gain market share while competitors struggle with declining traditional SEO results.
At Ronin, we’ve been tracking these changes since AI Overviews first appeared in testing. We’ve developed strategies that help Australian businesses transition from traditional SEO to AI-optimised visibility without losing ground. Our approach combines the precision of traditional SEO with the forward-thinking strategies needed for AI citations.
The businesses winning in 2025 aren’t just adapting their content marketing, they’re completely rethinking how they demonstrate expertise online. They’re becoming the source AI systems cite, not just another website in the results.
If you’re ready to future-proof your business against Google’s AI takeover, we’d be keen to show you exactly how successful Australian businesses are making this transition. Because in this new landscape, you’re either the expert AI quotes, or you’re invisible.
