Did We Pass Peak AIO? Whiteboard Friday | Tom Capper

Today I want to talk to you about AI overviews, which is probably not a new topic, or I hope

it's not a new topic to you by now.

But specifically, I want to talk about this slightly hyperbolic question.

Did we pass peak AI overview?

What I mean by that is, have we in some ways got to the point where AI overviews are trending

figuratively and literally downwards?

So what do I mean by that?

So what I'm really talking about is some data that we've started to see over the course

of 2025, particularly in the second half of 2025, where it's getting more and more common

to see SERPs like this one.

So this is just an example.

As you can see, it doesn't even have real words on it.

But basically, you can see these situations where you might have an organic result, and

then an organic result, and then an AI overview.

Or sometimes it will be an image pack, or sometimes it will be a featured snippet, or

sometimes it will be discussions in forums.

But in any case, you have an AI overview that isn't in position one.

And this never used to happen, or pretty much never used to happen historically.

So it's interesting that this is a trend that we've started to see.

So here's how the data looks at the time of writing.

We're filming this in October 2025.

Here's how the data looks.

So at the moment, this is for US and UK, about 40,000 keywords tracked in STAT, a reasonably

representative set of keywords.

And we've got 15% on desktop or 13% on smartphone of AI overviews appearing in position two

or lower.

So basically, there's something, and I'm not counting ads here, there is something that

is above the AI overview.

And this is quite a lot.

This is on average around one in seven cases.

And then in about one in 20 cases, or maybe a little bit more than that, it's even further

down.

So in position four, although we've seen, it's not that uncommon to get AIOs around

position six.

And that will often be with multiple different result types above them.

The other data point that sort of goes with this is about intent.

So overall, as I mentioned, it's about one in seven, about 14% of AIOs were in position

two or lower.

But actually, this is much higher for navigational.

About a quarter, I think, of the keywords in that set were navigational keywords.

Not necessarily, but typically meaning branded.

And in those cases, it was about 26%.

So what I take from that is that what's happening here is Google is saying, OK, we're really

certain of what this user is trying to do.

They're trying to go to this specific URL.

They just want the link to this specific URL.

So we'll just give them that rather than putting an AIO above it.

So some of the examples we saw, for example, were keywords like Amtrak routes, like Starbucks

menu, like I think one of them was Adobe PDF converter.

And you can think of all these examples.

There's a clear branded site that was what the user was trying to reach.

So Google has chosen to give them one or more results from that site and then the IO view.

But it wasn't like these were all navigational.

We had examples of this from every different type of search intent as well.

And I'll post some data below if you want to dig more into that.

But yeah, I think what we're seeing here is that this is about Google's confidence in

the intent of the search.

And navigational, that would typically be quite a high confidence.

The other trend that we're seeing at the same time is just about how common AOVs are overall.

So in January, before the so-called great decoupling, in January, we saw AOVs on about

9% of searches in this keyword set, or about 23% for informational.

So these red numbers are for informational.

And informational has been where AOVs have been most common for all of their history,

basically.

So 9% or 23% in January.

This went up massively in July.

And this is when a lot of people really started to feel the squeeze.

A lot of people saw their clicks going down in Google Search Console.

And there's been sort of a controversy, I guess, about it with Google trying to defend

these numbers.

And a lot of this was driven by informational.

Now in October, at the time of recording, these numbers have both crept down a bit.

And what's notable is that the informational numbers have crept down especially, from 43%

to 37%.

Obviously, that's still a lot of informational searches with an AOV at the top.

But what's happened here is that some of the other intents where AOVs are less common,

they're either steady or becoming slightly more common over time.

But in informational, where it was most common, they're trending down a bit more steeply.

Now I don't know whether this will be a sustained trend, right?

A lot of people probably doesn't know either.

They're still figuring this stuff out.

But it's interesting to see that we're not just trending up and up and up and up, which

I think is what a lot of us feared.

We should talk briefly about the elephants in the room.

Obviously, a lot of people are looking at Google's AI mode and wondering if that's the

future.

And that basically looks like the whole SERP being one big AI overview, right?

So a lot of people will be looking at that.

My personal view is that AI mode is a chat GPT competitor.

I think it's actually a chat GPT killer.

It's for a slightly different use case in terms of what it presents.

It's not necessarily for someone that is looking for web search.

And maybe at the moment, we use web search for more things than web search is really

for.

But I think there is a balance here.

I don't think you'll see the current AI mode interface become the only interface, but maybe

some hybridization is possible.

Speaking of which, if you look in search labs at the moment, and I recommend you do, if

you look in search labs at the moment, you'll notice two things.

One is that this trend is far more common in search labs.

Non-position one AI overviews are really common in search labs right now.

The other thing is this new feature type called web guides.

And this will often appear in position three or four or two.

And it looks like a cross between a regular SERP and an AI mode result.

And that's then appearing itself as a search feature.

So it's kind of like a super feature snippet, I guess, except it's not necessarily in position

one.

It contains some regular organic results which look like regular organic results as well,

so they're a bit clickier than AI overviews.

But also often these sort of huge walls of what I could less generously call AI slop

or more generously call helpful text.

But yeah, this is maybe the kind of hybrid experience that we're working towards.

Anyway, I hope you found that interesting.

As I say, there'll be some more data in the links below.

Thank you very much.

And I'll see you in the next one.