At the end of August, Google confirmed a change most people noticed before they read about it. For some searches, the AI Overview at the top of the page no longer waits for a "Show more" click. It opens straight into a full, AI Mode style answer, and the ordinary results slide further down the screen.
Google's statement to Search Engine Land on 28 August was short: "For some queries, AI Overviews may dynamically expand for topics where our systems determine it's most useful for people." Robby Stein, who works on Search at Google, added on X that if a user has already started scrolling, "the expansion stops to keep your place." He also said Google is "always testing and tuning these experiences."
If your business gets customers from Google, you are probably asking two questions. Is this taking my clicks? And what can I still do about it? Here is what is confirmed, what you can now measure, and which kinds of pages still earn the click.
What we know, and what Google has not said
- Confirmed: some AI Overviews expand automatically into a longer answer, and the expansion stops if the user is already scrolling.
- Confirmed: Google says the reason is that users "find Search more helpful and engage deeper in follow-up exploration."
- Not stated: which countries, languages or devices are included, or how many queries it applies to. Coverage describes it both as a test and as live. Treat it as something that will spread.
The scale is why it matters. At I/O in May, Sundar Pichai said AI Overviews had passed 2.5 billion monthly users and AI Mode one billion. A small layout change at that size is a large change in where attention goes.
Is it taking clicks?
Google's position is that clicks from pages with AI Overviews are fewer in some cases but better. Its own documentation says these clicks are "higher quality", meaning people spend longer on the site they land on. Independent research is less comfortable.
- Pew Research Center tracked real browsing by more than 900 US adults in March 2025. Users clicked a normal result on 8 percent of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15 percent when none did. They clicked a link inside the summary on 1 percent.
- Ahrefs, a third-party SEO tool, reported in February 2026 that an AI Overview correlated with a 58 percent lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page on informational keywords. That is correlation, not proof of cause, and click-through fell on keywords without AI Overviews too.
Neither study measured the new auto-expanding version, because it did not exist yet. It is reasonable to assume it pushes the same trend further for the queries where it appears. So the honest answer is yes, for the kind of question an AI can answer in a paragraph.
Measure it before you react to it
Search Console now shows you something it could not show before. The Generative AI performance report became available to every website worldwide on 31 August. It counts how often links to your site were shown inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, device and date.
Know its limit. It reports impressions only. No clicks, no click-through rate, no position. Clicks from AI features are still counted in the regular Performance report, inside the "Web" search type, but they cannot be separated out there. Google's announcement says more metrics will be added over time.
Until then, the useful method is simple. Take your most important pages. Compare their generative AI impressions with their clicks in the Performance report, month on month. A page with rising AI impressions and falling clicks is being summarised instead of visited. A page with rising impressions and steady clicks is being cited and still chosen.
What still gets clicked
This is our reading of the pattern, not a Google statement. An AI answer replaces a click when the searcher only needed information. It does not replace a click when the searcher needs to do something, verify something, or see something only you have.
- Pages where the next step is an action. Booking, buying, requesting a quote, calling, visiting. An overview can tell someone which clinic is open late. It cannot book the appointment.
- First-hand evidence. Google's own guide to generative AI search tells site owners to focus on "non-commodity content". Your own measurements, case studies, prices, photos and results are the things a summary has to link to, because it cannot invent them.
- Local intent. "Near me" and neighbourhood searches still end on a map, a Business Profile or a website. We covered that side in our local SEO guide.
- Tools and comparisons with real numbers. Calculators, configurators, pricing breakdowns and side-by-side comparisons get clicked because the value is in using them, not reading about them.
- Brand searches. People who search for you by name still want your site. Make sure the page they land on is the right one.
What loses: generic explainers, definitions and "what is" articles that say what a hundred other pages say. If a paragraph from an AI can replace your page, it will.
What not to waste time on
Google's documentation is unusually direct here, and a lot of paid advice contradicts it.
- Google's guide says optimising for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- No special schema. The guide says structured data is not required for generative AI search and there is no special markup to add.
- No llms.txt. Google says Search itself does not use those files.
- No FAQ markup for rich results. Google retired FAQ rich results in May 2026. Keep FAQs if they help readers; do not expect a search feature from them.
One setting does matter. Search Console's Search generative AI control, now available worldwide, lets a site opt out of AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover AI features. Google says it is not a ranking signal for the rest of Search, but a site that opts out gets no traffic or impressions from those features, and Google's guide now says a site must be included to be eligible. We explained when opting out makes sense, which is rarely, in our opt-out article.
What we would do first
- Open the new report and export generative AI impressions for your top 20 pages.
- Put clicks next to them from the Performance report for the same pages and months.
- Sort pages into two groups: action pages that should keep their clicks, and information pages that are being summarised.
- Strengthen the action pages with prices, proof and a clear next step. Rewrite information pages around first-hand evidence, or merge them.
- Check again monthly. The layout will keep changing; the data will tell you when it matters.
For the wider picture of how to be the source AI answers cite, read why there is no separate AI SEO. If your traffic dropped and you want to know whether this is why, send us the site. Reading Search Console properly is part of our marketing work.