AI Overviews Are Changing SEO Forever | Semrush 2025 Study Deep Dive

million keyword AI overview study. Just

dropped it. Dropped it yesterday and I

skimmed it. It has a lot of interesting

facts. It's a big read and I started

reading it and I'm like, you know what?

Why am I reading this alone when I have

an audience of SEOs who are just as

interested in this as I am? So, I'm

going to read this. I'm going read this

with all of you. And if you're watching

on YouTube, I'm going to share all the

graphs and everything that this mega

article shares. I'm going to share it

all as well. Thank you to Semrush for

making this. All right, let's get

started. Semrush AI overview study. What

2025 SEO data tells us about Google's

search shift. Google's rollout of AI

overviews is arguably the most

disruptive change to the search

landscape since the introduction of

featured snippets. It's true. our deep

dive analysis based on tens of thousands

of keywords SER feature overlaps and

indust if you don't know what SER means

it it means search engine results page

SER feature overlaps and industry which

is like the page of Google and industry

specific visibility shifts reveals how

and where Google is ch is changing the

rules and what SEOs publishers and

marketers need to do about it we analyze

10 million plus keywords including the

clickstream data data from Datos, a

Seamrush company that trigger AI

overviews in the US on desktop to find

the answers to these questions. So these

are the questions that will be answered.

How many queries trigger AI overviews

overall? What kind of queries are

triggering AI overviews? Which

industries have been impacted the most

by AI overviews so far? Are AI overviews

driving more zeroclick searches? This is

what was found. And so here's the key

takeaways just right at the top. So,

these are the key takeaways. AI

overviews are on the rise. We all know

that

13.14% of all queries triggered AI

overviews in March 2025. That's up from

6.49% in January 2025. Informational

content is most likely to trigger AI

overviews.

88.1% of queries that trigger an AI

overview are informational. That's huge.

Hrefs just just did a similar study and

they found that it was

99.2% of AI overviews were triggered

byformational queries. Next from

SEMrush, the number of navigational

queries that trigger AI overviews has

doubled since January from 74% to

1.43%. So that's people who are googling

looking for like a brand login page for

example. They're trying to navigate to

something that they know of. Another

one, science, health, and society are in

the crosshairs of AI overviews. Science

is up

22%, health is up 20%, people in society

up 18%, and law and government up 15%.

So, these industries are experiencing

the largest share of growth of AI

overviews, indicating a rapid shift in

how users get answers in these high

trust, information dense categories.

That's that's crazy. So, Google is

summarizing is using its AI to summarize

answers in really high trust information

dense categories, but I bet you that

people will want to click because when

you have something that's so important

in your life, you're not going to risk

an AI hallucinating and you're probably

going to go in and double check

yourself. That's what my intuition tells

me. Zero clicks. On average, keywords

that trigger AI overviews show higher

zeroclick behavior likely due to

theirformational nature. But our same

keyword analysis shows zeroclick rates

actually declined slightly after AI

overviews were introduced. Very

interesting. Here's a quote. The

continuing rise of AI overviews across

all types of keywords suggests a shift

towards more direct interaction within

search results. The implications for

digital marketers are increasingly

prevalent. Ensuring visibility now means

optimizing for AI overviews, a challenge

that Semrush is uniquely equipped to

address. Thank you, Semrush. All right,

so why should you care about AI

overviews? AI overviews are AI generated

summaries that appear directly within

Google search results. Built on Google's

generative AI models, they aim to

deliver an instant synthesis of relevant

content pulled from the web. Unlike

featured snippets which extract a

sentence or two from a single source, AI

overviews attempt to consolidate

knowledge from multiple sources to

present users with a unified answer. In

short, they're turning Google into both

a search engine and an answer engine.

Three things. These summaries appear

above organic results. They reduce the

need for users to click through to

websites. They may cannibalize traffic

from publishers, e-commerce platforms,

affiliates, and content marketers.

That's if you're going afterformational

queries. Don't go after them. Method of

the of the study. Seamrush analyzed 10

million plus keywords to define the

share of queries triggering AI

overviews. Monthly changes in AI

overview share by intent type. Oh, cool.

So, what's your what's the intent be

behind the search? Keywords that trigger

AI overviews. This this is everything

that Seamrush analyzed. They analyzed

10,000 keywords to define keyword

length, keyword difficulty levels, and

search volume levels. SER feature

co-occurrence with AI overviews. So what

other SER features are occurring? Domain

visibility by industry. 200,000 plus

keywords to define zeroclick rate trends

from January 2024 to March 2025. This

allowed us to observe what kinds of

content AI overviews target, how that's

changing over time, and what SEO

strategies are still effective. Oh,

zeroclick behavior, the biggest SEO KPI

shift. Our AI overview stealing clicks

from the organic search results. To find

out, Semer partnered with Datos, a Semer

company, to analyze over 200,000

keywords, each with a search volume over

100. So, all the keywords that were

studied for this for these 200,000

keywords, search volume was over 100

that either triggered or did not trigger

an AI overview between January and March

2025. To understand causality, we also

tracked a set of keywords that then that

did not trigger AI overviews in January,

but did in March. This allowed us to

directly compare zeroclick behavior

before and after an AI overview was

introduced for the same keyword.

Keywords that trigger AI overviews do

tend to have higher zeroclick rates on

average, but this may reflect

theirformational intent, not causation.

Although keywords with AI overviews have

higher than average zeroclick rates, the

trend is not consistently rising.

Between January and March 2025,

zeroclick behavior among these queries

actually declined slightly, challenging

the assumption that AI overviews always

reduce clicks. This points to a more

complex interaction between query type,

user intent, and how AI answers are

delivered. When we analyze the same

keywords before and after they started

showing AI overviews, we found zeroclick

rate slightly decreased from

38.1% to

36.2%. That suggests AI overviews do not

automatically increase zeroclick

behavior. And that makes sense. And that

makes a lot of sense. Language is

nuanced. search is nuanced, information

is nuanced. If there's something that's

really important, you might want to dig

deeper and make sure, again, like I

said, the AI is not hallucinating. Or

you might be looking for a unique voice

on on a topic, in which case, you're

also going to click deeper so you can

actually hear from the author rather

than the AI synthesizing the author who

might emphasize the wrong points. You

see that all the time, the AI will

emphasize the wrong things. It might

summarize things a bit accurately, but

it's it's not emphasizing what's most

important. And you see that, too. Here's

another quote. AI overviews are

reshaping the search landscape in real

time, and marketers can no longer rely

on rankings alone. Visibility now means

earning a spot in the answer itself. To

succeed, marketers will need to create

content that works within the evolving

complexities of AI search, and that

gives users real value. No clicks

required. I personally think that's a

BS. I think that's BS. I think the AI

overview is it's it will cite it

sources, but just seeing the brand in

the AI overview is really not going to

do that much for for boosting the bottom

line and for getting you sales and for

getting you customers. I think the best

thing to do is to not go after the

keywords that trigger AI overviews and

go after keywords where even if go

basically transactional keywords and

even if an AI overview is triggered for

a transactional keyword, people are

still going to click through because

that's the intent behind the keyword.

People want to take action. That's what

a transactional keyword is. What

percentage of queries are triggering AI

overviews? We looked at 10 million plus

keywords and defined the percentage of

all queries that are currently

triggering in AI overview. And the data

shows they're rapidly increasing in

2025. AI overviews were triggered for

6.49% of queries in January. That

climbed to

7.64% in February, an 18% increase, and

then up to

13.14% by March, 72% growth from the

previous month. Woo! Oh, wow. That's

That's a big That's some big increases.

This suggests AI overviews are more than

a passing feature. They're changing how

information is found online, most

notablyformational content, the kind

that provides answers and insights, has

been most affected by AI overviews. By

the way, compact keywords, my 13 plus

hour SEO course, is about going after

transactional keywords, notformational

keywords. Though the lessons that I that

I teach also work for ranking for for

informational keywords. I used them one

time to rank for anformational keyword

above the New York Times five minutes

after I posted the article. I posted the

article five it was an it was targeting

anformational keyword. It was during

COVID. Five minutes later I was ranking

number one and previously the New York

Times was ranking number one. So, these

lessons work, but I just totally advise

go after transactional keywords. You can

learn more at compactkeywords.com. And

if you've checked out the compact

keywords landing page in the past, I

just put up a new explainer video for

it. It's a 10-minute explainer video

showing what the compact keywords method

is, saying why it's better than blog

SEO, which is not what not what compact

keywords is. compact keywords goes after

transactional keywords with scenario

conversionbased pages instead of blog

SEO instead of articles. Anyway, there's

a ton in this video. I spent a long time

making it. If you like this podcast,

you'll like the video. compact

keywords.com. Here's another quote from

the Seamrush study. Google's AI

overviews now appear in over 13% of all

searches, and that number continues to

climb. We know that inclusion isn't

random. It's a trust signal. Brands that

create consistent and expert level

content power AI answers. In this new

SEO landscape, authority doesn't just

rank, you become the answer. That's

another reason why going

afterformational searches is difficult.

It's if it's more competitive and you

need even more domain authority for

yourformational page to rank, you're

better off going after transactional

keywords where there's just huge gaps in

the market because people don't target

transactional keywords because they have

lower search volume even though they

have more desire behind them. So, you

don't need as much authority to rank

really well for transactional searches.

That's crazy. These are these are the

searches where people are searching to

literally take action. Maybe that's a

purchase, maybe that's use a product,

maybe that's do a discovery call, but

these people are searching to take

action. And because there's just

naturally less of those people in any

marketing funnel, these people are

undertargeted and that means you don't

need as much authority. And I've also

just seen that for years and years and

years and years from my brands and other

people's brands and a million brands. In

fact, yesterday I saw it from a from a

search result I was just googling

randomly. I saw from a search result

that had a domain authority of three out

of 100 just because it was targeting the

right transactional keywords. All right,

so here's some hard stats. What kind of

queries are triggering AI overviews? We

analyzed 10,000 terms that trigger AI

overviews. Here's what we found. Typical

features of keywords that trigger an AI

overview. Top level keyword metrics.

Average search volume 338. Median search

volume 70. Average CPC, average cost per

click is 53. Max cost per click is $26.

Wow. Average keyword difficulty is.38.

These values show that AI overviews

currently tend to appear for longtail

low difficulty informational queries,

not high volume transactional keywords.

This is consistent with Google's

previous rollout strategies for features

like featured snippets and people also

ask those began with fact-based queries

before expanding into ambiguous or

controversial topics. For example,

theformational query, what is BMR

currently triggers an AI overview. BMR

or basil metabolic rate is the number of

calories your body burns at rest to

maintain basic life sustaining

functions. Oh, while the commercial

query best protein powder does not

trigger an AI overview. So, the question

is, is Google just testing AI overviews

in low-risk areas before expanding them

to more queries? We analyze 10 million

keywords to define how the search intent

of queries that trigger an AI overview

has changed over time for clues. The

search intent of queries that trigger an

AI overview. This breakdown confirms a

clear insight. AI overviews are not

targeting conversionheavy content yet.

That's what it says. And even if it

does, I just want to emphasize, I want

to I want to repeat, even if it does,

people are are searching to convert. So

the AI is just going to recommend the re

recommend brands for the searchers to

convert and you are putting out content

that trains the AI to recommend your

brand. Seamrush continues, "But the

percentage of keywords triggering an AI

overview with commercial, transactional,

and navigational intent has slightly

grown since January. Commercial queries

are up from

6.28% in January to 8.69% in March.

Transactional queries up from

1.69% to

1.76%. Navigational queries up from 74%

to

1.43%. Here's what this means. Top

offunnel informational content is the

most at risk from AI overviews. Only a

small share of keywords that trigger an

AI overview are commercial,

transactional or navigational, but there

has been an increase in the number of

middle of the funnel and bottom of the

funnel terms that trigger AI overviews

since January. Slight increase.

Navigational AI overviews are doubling.

A major signal that even branded traffic

is at risk. And but it's a it's a

navigational I still I wouldn't be

worried about navigational AI overviews

because people are trying to go

somewhere. Oh, my coffee is ready.

Excuse me for a second. I'm back. I'm

back with my coffee. If you're watching

on YouTube, I have this thermos. It's a

Brooklyn little league soccer thermos

that we probably got decades ago in

Brooklyn. And I take it with me when I'm

traveling. And I'm I'm traveling through

Europe as I record this. And I have this

uh this thermos from Brooklyn with me

just as I as I travel. I don't need to

bring it with me. It takes up extra room

on my luggage, but I like having this

Brooklyn thermos. That's where I'm from.

Just with me wherever I go. High

opportunity keywords for now. It's from

Seish. High opportunity keywords. The

vast majority of AI overviews are

focused on low CPCformational queries.

That means commercially valuable

keywords, especially those with CPC

above $2 and keyword difficulty below

30% are still largely untouched. We

filter these using Semer's CPC and and

KD data to identify queries that are

high value, not triggering AI overviews,

still relatively easy to rank for. These

are your low competition, highreward

keywords, and ideal for targeting while

AI disruption is still limited to the

top of the funnel. Examples include, oh,

and there's a ton of keywords here.

Start your own insurance business,

removable prostadontics, how much to

install sliding glass door, employee

performance review questions, how often

should you do cryotherapy, best online

interior decorating schools, why is my

gas heater making noise, how do I become

a music teacher, cost to replace roof on

mobile home. There's just this long

list. that I'm not going to read it all

to you, but these keywords are

commercially valuable and not yet too

competitive and they don't trigger AI

overviews for now at least. You know,

I'll say this for a study that says AI

overviews don't always decrease

click-through rate. So far, a lot of

this study is about how not to trigger

AI overviews. So clearly the authors of

this study feel threatened by AI

overviews enough to say let's try not to

trigger the AI overviews and it makes a

lot of sense. I mean a lot of people

will be satisfied with an AI overview

and will not want to will not want to

click deeper. Some will again for

complex terms or terms that are high in

trust or terms where people want a

unique voice but not always. So I get

it. Keyword shape. What do AI overview

queries look like? We analyze the

structure and length of AI overview

triggering keywords and those that do

not trigger an AI overview. Keywords

that trigger AI overviews tend to be

slightly longer in word count and more

likely to include clarifications,

comparisons, or definitions.

Classicformational query shapes. These

queries are longer than navigational

keywords, but shorter than

conversational searches. They're often

structured as definitions. What is

intermittent fasting? Comparisons.

Difference between debit and credit

clarifications. Can dogs eat grapes?

These kinds of queries have been the

cornerstone of most SEO content

strategies for years. Now brands will

have to compete against AI overviews to

earn attention and clicks in the SERs.

Takeaway: Google prefers predictable

fact-based questions where it can

confidently summarize a consensus

answer. That makes a lot of sense.

Another reason why going after compact

keywords is so good because you are

target with my method of SEO you are

targeting undertargeted keywords. That's

also the reason that why my compact

keywords landing pages which I made in

2019 still rank number one for their

target keywords because other people

don't target them. So they get all these

conversions year after year and then

they they continue to go undertargeted

and because not that many people are

targeting these keywords, Google doesn't

have as much to to summarize. So there's

not a clear consensus. Back to Semrush

AI overviews are showing up most on low

CPC, low volume queries with nearly 60%

of keywords having under 100 monthly

searches. A significant share, over 65%

fall into the 21 to 60 keyword

difficulty range, indicating that Google

is targeting queries that are moderately

competitive in organic search, but still

offer little ad revenue potential. But

here's the deeper insight. 95% of

keywords with AI overviews either have

no ads or extremely low CPC. Wow. That

means Google is deploying AI overviews

primarily on queries that are difficult

to monetize, deliberately avoiding

disruption to its ad revenue model. Wow.

Key takeaway. AI overviews are spreading

across the entire customer journey, but

Google is starting with the safest,

least profitable queries. So, while user

experience is changing, the business

model behind search remains intact for

now. Where AI overviews are showing up,

SER feature overlap. Are AI overviews

replacing existing SER features or

appearing alongside them? We examined

which features most often sit next to AI

overviews in the SERs to find out. AI

overviews are being layered on top of

existing formats rather than replacing

them, at least for now. Visual and

structured content types, videos,

reviews, FAQs look more likely to

survive. That's great. Do continue to do

video SEO. Take your target keywords,

put them at the beginning of your video

title, the beginning of your video

description. Take your video transcript

if it if it is a short video, and then

use that as the rest of your video

description. Back to Semrush. Classic

monetization features, ads, shopping,

news are rarely paired with AI overviews

under 1%. Category trends. Which

industries have been most affected by AI

overview so far? To find out, we looked

at the percentage growth from September

2024 to March 2025 in the number of SERs

featuring AI overviews across different

verticals, comparing early and current

rollout periods. Key observations:

Sciences at the AI overview frontline,

22% up. Science content is rich in

structured, welldocumented, consensus

answers, making it easy to synthesize,

and that has put it on the AI overview

front line. Two, health, people and

society, law and government. Google is

weighing in on sensitive subjects. On

one hand, it's not surprising that

health, people, and society and law and

government have seen a huge rise in AI

overview coverage. All three industries

are dominated byformational queries. On

the other hand, it's surprising to see

Google roll out AI overviews so

aggressively in three industries that so

often lack consensus answers and come

with more than their fair share of

regulatory pressure and misinformation

risks. That's true. That's a good point.

The key takeaway this suggests Google

believes its models have become more

reliable and fact anchored. News and

sports is Google shying away from

real-time information. News and sports

are two categories that are almost

entirely made up of searches for

up-to-dateformational content. The fact

that these categories are lagging behind

the average growth in AI overviews

suggest Google is still wary of covering

recent events with AI generated content.

The key takeaway is Google is treading

lightly around searches for breaking

news and real-time information where

there isn't enough information to

present a consensus answer to a query.

That makes sense, too. That's also

brilliant if you're if you're doing SEO

with breaking news and I've done that

very often. You might be less at risk.

Food and drink and home and garden

surprisingly slow growth. That is

surprising. Intuitively, you'd expect

food and drink and home and garden to

have seen a similar growth in AI

overviews as industries like pets and

animals and autos and vehicles. All four

categories have similar have a similar

mix of

transactionalformational keywords. After

all, however, food and drink and home

and garden queries are triggering

significantly fewer AI overviews than

industries with a similar search intent

distribution. So, these are two

categories to keep an eye on over time.

How about real estate and shopping?

Noticeable lagards. Real estate and

shopping have seen the slowest growth in

AI overviews, which makes sense given

these two industries are made up of a

much higher percentage of commercial and

transactional queries than others. Real

estate's lack of growth also suggests

that location-based content is safe for

now. So, here's a quote from Morty

Oberstein about Pizza NYC. I think of AI

overviews like a less visual local pack.

If I were searching for Pizza NYC and I

saw Joe's Pizza in the local pack, there

is a good chance I would not go to that

website. I would look at the location,

some pictures, maybe some reviews, and

just go buy a slice. In the case of

Google's AI overviews or AI mode, I

might not have all of that context,

pictures, reviews, etc. So, I might have

to search for the site. Being listed in

the AI output can and should trigger

navigational searches. The only

difference here, well, not the only

difference is that to get into the AI,

you don't need to optimize your Google

business profile. You need to optimize

your entire web profile. And that's a

much broader comprehensive complicated

and holistic process than optimizing for

something. As I read that, my mind went

to if you were listening to this right

after listening to this, just go submit

your site to a bunch of directories.

Please do that. Submit your brand to a

bunch of directories. Submit your site

to a bunch of directories. Make sure you

are in places. So here is strategic

takeaways for marketers and SEO

strategies based on industries and the

risk level. So we'll start with science,

health, people and society, law and

government. Risk level is very high. The

strategy is move beyondformational

content. Prioritize distinct POVs,

expert commentary and interactive

formats like tools and video or just go

after transactional keywords,

notformational ones. Travel, jobs and

education, electronics, internet and

telecom. The risk level is moderate. The

strategy strengthen authority signals,

authorship, expert sourcing,

credentials, and linked references. Or

my advice, go after transactional

keywords. Next one, pets, autos,

finance, beauty, forums. Risk level is

moderate strategy. Prepare for hybrid

SERs. Optimize now for blends of AI,

organic, PAA, and multimedia. And it

doesn't say this, but Edward's advice.

Just go after transactional keywords.

Last one. News, real estate, shopping,

games, food and drink. The status, the

risk level is safer for now. Strategy,

focus on eat, experience, expertise,

authoritiveness, trust, but monitor

closely. These categories are lower on

the rollout curve, but may rise fast.

And Edward's advice, continue to go

after transactional keywords. We're

almost at the end of this thing now.

We're almost at the end of this of this

mega article. You know, this article

said that it was a 13minute read. I

don't know about that because I've been

recording this so far for 39 minutes.

Yeah, I've been taking breaks to talk

about stuff and to make my coffee with

some nice milk. But it's I don't know. I

don't know if this is 13 minutes. If I

was sitting and reading this by myself,

would it take me 13 minutes? I think it

would take me longer. So cool that I get

to read the stuff that I'm going to read

normally like this and I have people who

want to listen to me read it. It's so

neat. It's like I'm doing my work and

I'm not by myself and everyone gets to

gets to hear my thoughts aloud. Okay,

I'm I'm I'm done indulging. Back to this

back to this article. Which sites have

been most affected by AI overviews? To

find out, we looked at how the average

number of a domain's keywords triggering

AI overviews has changed from January to

March 2025, revealing which industries

are accelerating and how rapidly. Across

nearly all industries, February showed a

dip or mild decline, but March exploded

with most sectors more than doubling

their AI overview triggering keywords

compared to February. Yeah, just huge

increases across across all industries.

Which industries receive the most links

from AI overviews? Not every AI overview

links out to a domain. So, we also

looked at the average number of keywords

for which a domain is actively included

within an AI overview summary. In other

words, sites that don't just show in the

traditional organic links when AI

overviews appear, but as part of the AI

generated answer. This is a critical

distinction. While many search engine

results pages may display an AI

overview, not all domains earn

visibility inside of it. By comparing

February to January and March to both

months, we can observe how Google's

model evolved in terms of trusting

domains to power it summaries. A dip in

February suggests a recalibration phase

likely related to quality signals data

testing or policy refinement. Another

quote from Cindrum. What we have to

remember is that LLMs and their search

utilities don't have sophisticated

crawlers with rendering. They don't own

the most popular browser in the world

like Google does. This will change

optimization strategies. LLMs and new AI

search utilities will likely have to

lean on feeds, databases, and APIs more

than we are used to. You can already see

that with the addition of product feed

ingestion for chat GPT. Different

methods of discovery could offer SEOs a

whole new list of potential things to

optimize. That's interesting, too. Just

make sure your brand is submitted to a

bunch of different places. And actually,

that's the whole article. That's that's

the end. We're done. Huh. The rest is

promotional stuff for Seamrush, which is

great and everyone should check out

Seamrush. Thank you Seamrush for writing

this crazy crazy study. What takeaway

did I get? Go after transactional

keywords. That was my that was my

takeaway. And make sure your brand is

distributed across different

directories. Make sure you are active

just like putting out your brand in

other in social media and other places.

But that's what that you should have

been doing that anyway. If you have a

website, you should be doing that

anyway. You should be submitting your

website to different places, promoting

it in different places, doing normal

marketing for your brand because that

build link that builds links. It builds

links while getting attention. So much

of of link building doesn't actually

result in attention. It results in links

that very few people click or pay

attention to. My favorite link building

is is link building that also results in

attention. And so you do that which

distributes your brand in other places.

and then you continue going after bottom

offunnel transactional keywords. That's

my takeaway. Thank you again so much to

Seamrush for writing this. This was

written by Jana Ganco and actually I

think I've spoken to Jana before. I

can't remember where. I'm positive that

we've met. Anyway, this was such a great

article. I hope everybody enjoyed it.

This is episode 671 of my daily digital

marketing podcast, The Edward Show.

Thank you to everyone who made it

through all of this. I learned a lot.

Hope you learned a lot too and I will

talk to you again tomorrow.