AI Overviews Dropped from 25% to 15.69%: Google’s Secret Rollback
Semrush data tracking 10+ million keywords reveals AI Overviews peaked at 24.61% in July 2025, then plummeted to 15.69% by November—a 36% decrease Google never announced. But here's the twist: AI Over
TL;DR: Google rolled out AI Overviews to nearly a quarter of all search queries by July 2025 (24.61%), then quietly rolled them back to 15.69% by November—a 36% decrease nobody at Google bothered to announce. Semrush data tracking 10+ million keywords shows the peak happened in mid-summer, followed by a dramatic pullback. Meanwhile, Ahrefs analysis of 540,000 query pairs reveals AI Overviews and AI Mode cite the same URLs only 13.7% of the time despite reaching 86% semantic similarity. They’re completely separate systems using different sources. Google’s lead product manager Logan Kilpatrick confirmed in September 2025 that AI Mode will become the “default” search experience “soon.” The rollback isn’t a failure—it’s strategic repositioning. Google is quietly phasing out AI Overviews while preparing AI Mode for mass adoption. Publishers who optimized for AI Overviews are now facing a system that cites completely different sources.
Nobody at Google announced this.
In July 2025, AI Overviews appeared for 24.61% of all search queries tracked by Semrush.
By November 2025, that number had dropped to 15.69%.
That’s a 36% decrease in AI Overview visibility in just four months.
No blog post. No announcement. No explanation.
Google just quietly rolled back one of the biggest changes to search results in a decade, and hoped nobody would notice.
But Semrush noticed. They tracked 10+ million keywords from January through November 2025.
And the data tells a story Google doesn’t want to tell.
The Rise and Fall Nobody Saw Coming
Here’s the complete trajectory:
January 2025: 6.49% of queries triggered AI Overviews July 2025: 24.61% of queries triggered AI Overviews (peak) November 2025: 15.69% of queries triggered AI Overviews
The rise was aggressive. January to July saw a 279% increase in AI Overview visibility.
Google was flooding search results with AI-generated summaries. Nearly one in four searches showed an AI answer at the top of the page.
Then something changed.
Between July and November, AI Overviews dropped from appearing on 24.61% of queries to 15.69%—losing more than a third of their presence.
The decline was just as aggressive as the rise. But this time, Google said nothing.
What Google Isn’t Saying
When AI Overviews launched globally in May 2024, Google positioned them as the future of search.
Liz Reid, head of Google Search, called them “a new era” for how people find information.
The company expanded AI Overviews to over 120 countries. They integrated ads into AI Overview results. They made the feature central to every major Search announcement.
Then they started pulling it back.
And when Semrush published data showing the rollback in mid-December 2025, Google’s response was silence.
No statement explaining the decrease. No guidance about whether this is temporary or permanent. No clarity about what changed.
Just a 36% reduction in visibility that affected hundreds of millions of searches per day.
The Pattern Hidden in the Data
The Semrush study reveals something even more interesting than the overall decline.
Q2 2025 showed an explosion of AI Overviews across every industry vertical.
Then Q3 saw a pullback—more than half of all sectors experienced decreases in keywords triggering AI Overviews.
Q4 brought increases again, but not to Q2 levels.
This isn’t random volatility. It’s testing and correction.
Google pushed AI Overviews hard in mid-2025, measured the results, then made strategic adjustments based on what they found.
What did they find that made them reduce AI Overview visibility by 36%?
Why Commercial Queries Got Cut
Early 2025 AI Overviews were almost entirely informational. In January, 91.3% of queries triggering AI Overviews were purely informational.
By October, that share dropped to 57.1%.
Commercial queries increased to 18.57%. Transactional queries reached 13.94%. Navigational queries (brand searches) jumped from 0.74% to 10.33%.
Google was expanding AI Overviews into money-making queries—the searches that drive ad revenue.
Then they pulled back.
Here’s why: ads alongside AI Overviews rose from 3% in January to roughly 40% by November. But 95% of keywords triggering AI Overviews either displayed no paid ads or had minimal commercial value.
Google’s $200+ billion advertising business depends on users clicking ads on commercial queries.
When AI Overviews started appearing on commercial searches, they displaced those ads.
The math became simple: keep AI Overviews on informational queries where ad revenue is low, reduce them on commercial queries where every click matters.
The Zero-Click Myth That Won’t Die
Critics predicted AI Overviews would destroy organic traffic by creating zero-click searches.
The data tells a different story.
When Semrush analyzed the same keywords before and after AI Overviews appeared, zero-click rates actually decreased—from 33.75% to 31.53%.
Overall zero-click rates for keywords with AI Overviews have steadily declined since January 2025.
AI Overviews don’t automatically reduce clicks. They often appear on queries that were already unlikely to generate clicks.
But here’s where it gets complicated: click-through rates for top-ranking pages dropped 34.5% when AI Overviews were present. Some publishers reported 50-90% lower CTRs on queries where AI summaries appeared.
Seer Interactive’s study of 3,119 informational queries across 42 organizations found organic CTR dropped 61% year-over-year (June 2024 to September 2025) on queries where AI Overviews were present.
The zero-click myth is wrong. But the click redistribution reality is devastating for publishers.
Enter AI Mode: The Real Replacement
While everyone focused on AI Overviews declining, Google was quietly building something else.
AI Mode launched in May 2025 as an “experimental” search experience.
By July, usage had increased 4x—from 0.25% in May to over 1% of all searches.
In September 2025, Logan Kilpatrick, Google’s lead product manager for AI, responded to a question about AI Mode becoming the default experience.
His answer: “Soon.”
Not “maybe.” Not “we’re considering it.”
“Soon.”
Liz Reid had already signaled this direction in May 2025, calling AI Mode “the future of Google Search.”
Now Google’s own product manager confirmed the timeline: AI Mode will replace traditional search as the default experience.
Two Systems, Completely Different Sources
Here’s where the story gets interesting.
AI Overviews and AI Mode are both Google products. Both use generative AI. Both appear in Google Search.
Most people assumed they were variations of the same system.
Ahrefs analyzed 540,000 query pairs comparing AI Mode and AI Overview responses.
The results: AI Mode and AI Overviews cite the same URLs only 13.7% of the time.
When restricting the comparison to just the top three citations, overlap increased slightly to 16.3%.
That still means 87% of citations are completely different.
SE Ranking found similar results: 10.7% URL overlap and 16% domain overlap between the two systems.
Despite this massive citation divergence, the two systems reach semantically similar conclusions 86% of the time.
They agree on what to say while fundamentally disagreeing on where they found it.
Why the Citation Difference Matters
Publishers who spent months optimizing for AI Overviews are about to face a brutal reality.
Visibility in AI Overviews does not translate to visibility in AI Mode.
Only 13.7% of citations overlap. That means 86.3% of the time, being cited in an AI Overview does nothing for your AI Mode visibility.
And if AI Mode becomes the default experience “soon,” all the optimization work done for AI Overviews becomes partially obsolete.
Different systems. Different sources. Different strategies required.
The Platforms That Win in Each System
Ahrefs’ research reveals distinct source preferences:
AI Mode favors:
Wikipedia (28.9% of responses vs 18.1% for AI Overviews)
Quora (3.5x more citations than AI Overviews)
Encyclopedic and detailed sources
Longer, more comprehensive content
AI Overviews favor:
YouTube (most frequently cited domain)
Videos and core pages (nearly 2x more than AI Mode)
Reddit (similar rates in both)
Article-format content
The citation patterns aren’t just different—they’re optimized for different user intents.
AI Overviews aim for quick, digestible answers. AI Mode builds comprehensive explorations.
One is a summary. The other is a research assistant.
The Usage Patterns That Explain Everything
AI Mode sessions behave completely differently from AI Overviews:
Time spent:
AI Mode: 49 seconds average
AI Overviews: 21 seconds average
Zero-click rates:
AI Mode: 93% of searches end without a click
AI Overviews: 43% result in zero clicks
Session behavior:
AI Mode: 75% of sessions never leave the pane
AI Overviews: Users frequently click through to sources
AI Mode is designed to keep users in Google. AI Overviews still drive some external traffic.
That difference explains why Google is phasing out AI Overviews while positioning AI Mode as the default.
The Three Industries Google Abandoned
The Semrush data shows which industries lost the most AI Overview coverage between March and November 2025:
Health: Significant decrease in AI Overview share People & Society: Greatest decrease of any vertical Law: Major reduction in coverage
These are all YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) topics where inaccurate AI summaries could cause real harm.
Google aggressively expanded AI Overviews into these areas in Q2, then pulled back in Q3 after seeing the results.
Meanwhile, Food & Drink saw the fastest growth (+7.25% since March) and is now the ninth-most impacted industry.
The pattern suggests Google is being selective about where AI summaries add value versus where they create risk.
What Publishers Are Actually Seeing
The Professional Publishers Association in the UK documented the real-world impact:
Click-through rates falling 10-25% year-over-year despite stable rankings
Lifestyle publisher: CTR dropped from 5.1% to 0.6%
Automotive publisher: CTR fell from 2.75% to 1.71%
Digital Content Next found AI Overviews linked to a 25% drop in referral traffic in August 2025.
Some publishers reported 50-90% lower CTRs when AI summaries appeared.
These aren’t marginal changes. They’re business-threatening declines.
And they happened while Google was quietly reducing AI Overview visibility by 36%.
The Ad Revenue Protection Strategy
Here’s what the data reveals about Google’s priorities:
January 2025:
Ads alongside AI Overviews: ~3%
AI Overviews mostly on informational queries: 91.3%
November 2025:
Ads alongside AI Overviews: ~40%
AI Overviews on informational queries: down to 57.1%
Google tried expanding AI Overviews to commercial queries. When that threatened ad revenue, they rolled back the feature and started monetizing it more aggressively where it remained.
The 36% decrease in AI Overview visibility happened alongside a 13x increase in ad integration (from 3% to 40%).
Google is protecting the $200+ billion advertising business while still appearing innovative with AI features.
Why AI Mode is Different (and Worse for Publishers)
AI Mode represents a fundamental shift from AI Overviews:
Response length:
AI Mode: ~300 words average
AI Overviews: ~50 words average
Citations per response:
AI Mode: 12.6 links average
AI Overviews: 13.3 links average (slightly more)
Zero-click rates:
AI Mode: 93% (more than 2x AI Overviews)
AI Overviews: 43%
User behavior:
AI Mode: Users spend 49 seconds, rarely click out
AI Overviews: Users spend 21 seconds, frequently explore sources
AI Mode citations are displayed in a sidebar with ~7 unique domains. Only 7% of responses include links below the main answer.
Even when you’re cited, users aren’t clicking. 93% of AI Mode sessions end without visiting any external site.
The Timeline of What’s Actually Happening
May 2024: AI Overviews launch globally January 2025: 6.49% query coverage May 2025: AI Mode launches; Liz Reid calls it “the future of Google Search” July 2025: AI Overviews peak at 24.61% August 2025: First major reports of publisher traffic declines September 2025: Logan Kilpatrick says AI Mode will be default “soon” November 2025: AI Overviews drop to 15.69% (36% decline from peak) December 2025: Semrush publishes data; Google says nothing
The pattern is clear: Google tested AI Overviews aggressively, measured the impact on ad revenue and publisher traffic, then began strategic rollback while positioning AI Mode as the replacement.
What Google Gained from the Test
The July peak wasn’t a failure. It was data collection.
Google needed to understand:
Which query types work well with AI summaries
How users interact with AI-generated content at scale
Where AI features threaten core advertising revenue
What level of publisher backlash to expect
They got their answers. Now they’re implementing the strategy.
Reduce AI Overviews on commercial queries. Increase ad integration where they remain. Position AI Mode—which keeps 93% of users inside Google—as the future default experience.
The SEO Industry Caught Flat-Footed
While everyone optimized for AI Overviews, Google was building a completely different system.
Only 13.7% citation overlap means strategies optimized for AI Overviews have limited transfer to AI Mode.
Different source preferences. Different content formats. Different user intents.
The industry spent 2025 figuring out how to get cited in AI Overviews.
That work might become partially obsolete when AI Mode becomes the default.
What “Soon” Actually Means
Logan Kilpatrick’s September 2025 statement that AI Mode will be default “soon” came with no specific timeline.
Google VP Robby Stein cautioned people not to “read too much into” the statement.
But the evidence suggests “soon” means 2026:
AI Mode usage already increased 4x (from 0.25% to 1%+)
google.com/ai now leads directly to AI Mode (launched in September)
AI Mode rolled out to 180 countries
75 million users already adopted the feature
Google is preparing infrastructure for mass adoption. The default switch is implementation, not experimentation.
The Three Strategies That Still Work
Despite the chaos, three approaches remain effective:
1. Optimize for Both Systems Separately
AI Overviews favor quick-answer content. AI Mode favors comprehensive exploration.
Create both. Stop assuming one strategy covers both systems.
2. Focus on Brand Mentions Over Citations
AI Mode includes 2.5x more people and brand entities than AI Overviews.
If your brand appears in AI Overviews, there’s a 61% chance it’ll also show in AI Mode.
Brand recognition matters more than individual page citations.
3. Build for Discovery Outside Google
93% of AI Mode sessions end without clicks. Publishers can’t depend on Google sending traffic.
Reddit, YouTube, and community platforms matter more when Google’s AI keeps users inside the search page.
Why This Matters for Answer Engine Optimization
Traditional SEO optimized for blue links. AI Overview optimization focused on getting cited in summaries.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) optimizes for being cited across multiple AI systems—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and yes, Google’s AI features.
When Google’s own AI systems (AI Overviews vs AI Mode) only share 13.7% citation overlap, the lesson is clear:
Single-platform optimization doesn’t work anymore.
AEO strategies assume citation diversity across systems. They prepare for constant change in how AI platforms select sources.
That approach becomes essential when Google itself can’t decide between AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The Publisher Exodus Nobody Talks About
While Google reduces AI Overviews, publishers are making their own decisions.
Some block AI crawlers entirely (Google-Extended, GPTBot, etc.). Others pursue licensing deals with AI companies. A few embrace AI citations as brand exposure.
But the data suggests a darker trend: publishers optimizing for AI visibility often see traffic declines anyway.
Being cited doesn’t guarantee clicks. And with AI Mode’s 93% zero-click rate, citations might become visibility without value.
The question isn’t whether to optimize for AI features. It’s whether the effort produces meaningful business results when users rarely leave the AI interface.
What Happens in 2026
Three predictions based on the current trajectory:
1. AI Mode Becomes Default in H1 2026
Logan Kilpatrick said “soon” in September 2025. Google has spent Q4 expanding access and building infrastructure. The switch happens in the first half of 2026.
2. AI Overviews Stabilize Around 10-12%
The 15.69% November number will continue declining to roughly 10-12% of queries—primarily informational searches where ad revenue isn’t at stake.
3. Publishers Face Another Traffic Cliff
When AI Mode becomes default, publishers optimized for AI Overviews will discover their citations don’t transfer. Traffic drops again as 93% zero-click behavior becomes the norm.
The Bottom Line Nobody Wants to Admit
Google rolled out AI Overviews to nearly a quarter of all searches, then quietly pulled them back by 36% without explanation.
Meanwhile, they built a completely different system—AI Mode—that cites different sources only 13.7% of the time.
Now that system is being positioned as the “default” experience “soon.”
The rollback wasn’t a failure. It was strategic repositioning.
Google learned that AI Overviews threaten ad revenue on commercial queries. So they’re reducing AI Overviews and replacing them with AI Mode, which keeps 93% of users inside Google.
Publishers who spent 2025 optimizing for AI Overview citations are about to discover that work doesn’t transfer to AI Mode.
And Google never announced any of this. They just quietly changed the rules while everyone else scrambled to adapt.
The future of search isn’t AI Overviews. It’s AI Mode.
And it’s coming soon—whether publishers are ready or not.
Have you seen AI Overview visibility changes in your Search Console data? Reply with your before/after traffic numbers and we’ll analyze the impact.
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Until next week,
The SEOengine Team
P.S. - When Google’s own AI systems only share 13.7% citation overlap, the message is clear: optimize for multiple AI platforms, not just one. AEO strategies assume constant change. That’s the only approach that survives when Google can’t decide between AI Overviews and AI Mode.