With the rise and surge of AI Overviews, and soon AI Mode, site owners are dealing with an unprecedented situation from a search traffic standpoint. Impressions in search might be stable, or even increasing, yet clicks might be dropping. And that’s often due to AI Overviews ranking in the SERPs for important queries that typically drove a lot of traffic downstream. We know AIOs can negatively impact click-through rate from the search results, so that drop is not shocking at all.
Here is an example of what some are calling “The Great Decoupling” of clicks and impressions. I believe Darwin Santos was the first to use the phrase.
Note, although AIOs can definitely drag clicks down, some drops for sites are more about getting hammered by major algorithm updates. For example, I shared about this after a Wall Street Journal article covered the large drop in search traffic for some major news publishers (see tweet below). They attributed that drop completely to AIOs when some of those sites have gotten hit hard by broad core updates. So the drop was NOT entirely due to AI Overviews. You could see big drops in search visibility with several broad core updates.
Anyway, back to sites that are legitimately seeing a drop in clicks when impressions are stable. For those sites, there may be other areas of Search that can often go overlooked yet can still drive a good amount of traffic. And those areas are not impacted by AI Overviews (at least yet). I’m referring to Image Search, Video Mode in Search, and the News tab in Search. In addition, there is Google News and Discover which aren’t being impacted by AIOs (again, at least yet), but I’ll focus on the first three tabs for this post.
The Forgotten Coupling – Images, Video, and the News tab can still drive consistent traffic (at least for now).
When checking trending over time, the great decoupling of impressions and clicks is not happening for image search, video search (AKA Video Mode), and the News tab in Search. AIOs are simply not there, at least yet. So for those search verticals, the great decoupling is more like the forgotten coupling.
This provides an opportunity for site owners to drive more visibility and clicks via those additional search modes. I’ll cover some tips for site owners later in this post, but I’ll show you what I’m referring to via screenshots below.
For example, here are GSC screenshots from the performance reporting showing stability for image search (changing the search type from web to image):
And here are some examples from GSC of stability in the News tab in Search:
As you can see, these search verticals have been immune from AI Overviews for now. And that leaves a big opportunity for site owners. As the saying goes, ‘There’s gold up in them thar hills!’ Sure, it’s not the same traffic level as web search, but AIOs are not there to inhibit click-through from the search results. Below, I’ll cover some tips for site owners looking to drive more clicks via Search, but outside of web search.
Tips and recommendations for site owners about the forgotten coupling:
- Get your images situation in order from a technical SEO perspective. For example, I just helped a large publisher fix a big image search problem and clicks are surging back like mad. This can help offset the drop in traffic based on AI Overviews.
- If you focus on news, check the News tab in Search. It can actually drive quite a bit of traffic for some news publishers. It really depends on your focus, though. I’ve found that publishers focusing on B2B can see a lot of traffic from the News tab (which can be based on a lot of desktop traffic from their audience).
- If you are producing high-quality video content, you might want to think about creating what Google calls ‘Video Watch Pages’. With the changes Google pushed in April and December of 2023 to video thumbnails and Video Mode, your videos must be seen as the main content of the page in order to receive a video thumbnail and to rank in Video Mode in the SERPs. It’s also worth noting that YouTube is not affected by AI Overviews (at least yet), so building a strong video strategy can help on several levels beyond web search. Below is information from Google about the changes to Video Mode.
- And DO NOT forget about the impact that major algorithm updates can have on visibility across surfaces and search modes. Broad core updates can impact AI Overview visibility, rankings in image search, video search, the News tab, Google News, and Discover. Don’t miss the forest for the trees by focusing on AIOs and not paying attention to overall site quality. Like I’ve covered in my posts about broad core updates, I would maintain high “quality indexing” levels, provide a strong user experience, don’t hammer users with aggressive and disruptive ads, always provide unique and insightful content, and have a strong technical SEO foundation. You might be worrying about the impact of AI Overviews now, but if you get hit by a broad core update, you might lose rankings in those AIOs… And if that happens, your drop in traffic could get exponentially worse (as you’re not even showing up in AIOs anymore due to the algorithm update hit).
Summary: Don’t Overlook ‘The Forgotten Coupling’.
With the focus on AIOs and decreasing clicks, I just wanted to point out that other search verticals in the SERPs are currently not affected by AI Overviews (at least yet). So definitely make sure you check out those other areas of Search, how you are performing there, etc. Again, as the saying goes, ‘There’s gold in them thar hills!’
GG