AI Overviews don’t have to mean less traffic. With the right approach, they can drive more brand visibility and organic clicks.
This article outlines a recent example from my work with a UK e-commerce brand, focused on a single top-of-funnel keyword phrase in a highly competitive retail space.
The opportunity hiding outside the Top 50
Working with my client, we identified a selection of high-potential keyword phrases that were relevant for them, and that we collaboratively felt their website should be ranking prominently for.
One of these keyword phrases I highlighted attracted an estimated 500+ monthly UK searches. At the time, their website was ranking outside the Top 50, with results dominated by UK household names and global platforms including Amazon, Wikipedia and Reddit.
There was no dedicated or relevant landing page addressing the query, despite clear intent and commercial opportunity.
Why AI Overviews feel disruptive, yet can present an opportunity
AI Overviews can reduce click-through rates when they begin appearing above previously top-ranking listings. This impact is industry-wide and affects every brand on page one, across every sector. The deeper question, as I explored in another piece, is no longer just whether you rank, but whether the AI system has a reason to surface your business in the answer at all.
After more than 17 years working in SEO, one thing remains constant. Change is inevitable.
Rather than panic, I always return to two simple questions:
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What is within our control?
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How can this change be used to plug gaps and increase visibility?
AI Overviews represent a global shift in how search results are presented, but they also provide unprecedented clarity into what Google values and which sources it trusts.
Finding visibility gaps that others ignore
For this brand, over 700 relevant keyword phrases were tracked daily. As an exercise, the dataset was filtered to highlight any phrases where the brand was ranking outside the Top 50.
In many cases, being outside the Top 50, and often even outside the Top 10, is not the result of poor performance. It’s simply down to the absence of a dedicated or relevant landing page.
These phrases were flagged as missed opportunities, with the most commercially valuable themes prioritised for action.
Creating content AI Overviews actually reward
Each piece of content was created collaboratively and designed to be helpful to readers, rather than purely optimised for rankings.
The content was:
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Informed by what was already dominating AI Overviews
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Carefully edited for accuracy, tone of voice and brand alignment
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Structured around E-E-A-T principles and supported by the brand’s products and expertise
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Published and submitted via Search Console for rapid indexing
With AI Overviews, Google is now showing exactly which sources it favours and what content is being surfaced. That insight provides a valuable starting point.
From there, it becomes possible to create something more helpful, more relevant and ultimately more visible.
What changed once the page went live
Within weeks, the page moved from outside the Top 50 to position 1 in Google’s organic results, while also becoming the number one cited source within the AI Overview.
This visibility was achieved ahead of established retail giants and global platforms that previously dominated the results.
The impact so far
So far, this single piece of work has delivered:
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1,680+ organic clicks
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324,000+ impressions
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No ad spend required
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Increased brand exposure aligned with lower-funnel PPC activity
Based on current performance, and factoring in seasonal peaks such as Black Friday, this single page is forecast to generate more than 5,000 unpaid organic clicks and over 1 million search impressions across the next 12 months.
This shows the compounding, long-term impact of SEO: an initial investment of time in producing a high quality, authentic piece of content can drive return for months, even years to come, all without spending a penny on PPC.
What this means for SEO going forward
For anyone claiming that SEO is dead, this is a clear example of how AI-led search visibility can be used to drive new brand exposure and sustained organic traffic. The same direction shows up in another recent project where organic search impressions grew 76% year-on-year, with rankings and click share moving alongside the visibility growth. And measuring this kind of visibility is becoming a discipline in its own right, one I have explored through live client measurement work with Writesonic.
AI Overviews are not the end of SEO. They are simply the next evolution of it.
