AI Overviews has done a fair amount of damage in terms of traffic to many websites. More people take what Google’s AI produces as gospel without actually visiting sources. So, what can be done to get some of that traffic back to your blogs and websites?
What’s funny is that even AI Overview shows how much damage it has caused to traffic across various industries.
Today, we’re looking at “expert” tips and tricks to see if any of them are actually valid.
Oddly enough, a lot of these so-called tips are basic SEO steps we’ve been taking for more than a decade, which doesn’t bode well in determining which tips work the best. Hopefully, we can find some substantial evidence and stats to support the claim of “experts.”
In any case, let’s see if we can get some traffic back to the websites.
Getting Traffic Despite AI Overviews
I am scouring the internet, looking at every “expert” tip and piece of advice I can find about how to gain traffic after AI Overviews destroyed the search page.
It’s kind of funny to see how many experts rehash the same information.
This post might get updates as new information becomes available. But in the meantime, let’s go over some of the most common ideas. Keep in mind that nothing is ever guaranteed online. So, these “tips” may not prove worthwhile in your specific case.
1. Optimize for Visibility with AI
According to a variety of sources, structured snippets, authoritative elements, and updated content can increase the likelihood of gaining traffic by 115%.
A lot of tips are heavy on updating content, which was a significant factor in the Google algorithm about 10 years ago. In this case, it’s to demonstrate to the AI that your content is current with relevant information.
Of course, this doesn’t guarantee your site will experience an influx of clicks from being seen more in AI Overviews. It just means your content has a better chance of being seen.
All of the tips I’ve come across for AI optimization are the same ones experts touted before 2023. So, there’s really no change in this regard, except for underlining the importance of authoritative content, headings, and updates. It’s a decade-long practice that apparently is still used today by AI outside of the search algorithm.
2. Creating Content AI Can’t Duplicate
Experts say that you should create content that is beyond AI’s abilities. By sharing things like personal experience, completed case studies, and providing professional opinions, your posts are more likely to avoid getting wrapped up in AI Overviews to improve traffic.
It’s all about creating content from a personal experience while offering unique insights, even if you’re reviewing a well-covered topic. Unique screenshots or pictures are ideal, as it separates your content from everyone else’s.
In reality, AI is advancing constantly, and you can tell platforms to write content in first-person, giving the illusion of the above. So, while these tactics may work to boost visibility against AI Overviews, they’re not going to continue to have the same effect over the long term.
That’s especially true when you consider how many people are constantly turning to ChatGPT and other AI systems to create content.
Again, this is a tactic that has been around for more than a decade. In fact, I’ve been telling folks that unique images and screenshots are vastly important since 2017.
3. Create Topic Clusters (Content Pillars)
Here is another “expert” tip that has been around for more than a decade. Set up topic clusters (content pillars) of interlinking groups to accentuate your expertise in those topics.
This was one of the reasons why I was the go-to source for all things Textbroker for many years. I built a content pillar regarding Textbroker while providing answers to the most relevant questions in Google.
Clusters help search engines rank your authority for those specific topics. In my case, it was Textbroker. Essentially, the more you cover a topic with detailed information, the better you look to bots and search engines.
Creating content pillars also helps human visitors, as it makes the information easier to find overall. Most WordPress users will implement tags and categories to help build these clusters while also including internal linking structures.
I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but again, this has been a part of SEO strategies for over 10 years. So, nothing new here, either.
4. Focus On User Intent (Search Intent)
User intent is identifying what the searcher is trying to accomplish through queries and then providing that precise information. The longer the search phrase, the easier it is to provide those answers.
Identifying search intent can be tricky, especially if those terms are vague. For instance, if someone searches “book stores,” are they looking for online, offline, niche, local, digital, or indie book stores? But what about “book stores that buy used books?” That is far more focused and easier to answer.
The push for addressing user intent happened shortly after the 2013 updates from Google. It’s always been an important factor, but it was brought front and center after the Hummingbird updates. In fact, Google’s “Helpful Content” update in 2022 pushed even harder for high-quality answers to search intent.
Again, it has nothing to do with AI search results and is simply good SEO practice.
5. Diversify Your Traffic Acquisition
A rule of thumb for anyone owning a blog is to never put all your eggs in Google’s basket. Diversify where your website is seen online, which often includes email newsletters, forums like Reedit, and social media outlets such as LinkedIn.
Of course, these have all been part of content strategies for as long as I could remember, some going back to earlier than 2008. Well, at least the email and forums part. A lot of social sites today weren’t around back then.
While this is an old tip, a lot of people are putting far more emphasis on expanding marketing beyond a Google search. For instance, small businesses will invest up to $1400 in email marketing currently. Then, consider the return-on-investment ranges around $38 for every one dollar spent.
Theoretically, small businesses could profit an additional $51,800 after expenses by utilizing email marketing campaigns.
Anyway, the point is that you should never fully rely on Google to send you traffic. And that’s been an expert tip for many, many years. Just keep in mind that sharing links on social media for free isn’t as effective as you might think.
Social sites tend to bury that content because they don’t want users leaving their platforms.
6. Building Your Brand Reputation
There are a lot of steps to building your brand online, especially when it comes to SEO. Nowadays, experts also want you to focus on using your brand as part of the search criteria. This helps separate your content from others, telling Google searchers want your materials and not the input from others.
The problem with this is that the Google algorithm will still show content from others, even if AI Overviews is not present. Unless people input the “site” string in a Google search, competing posts and YouTube videos will still show on the results page, and often above your own content if it ranks higher.
You can search a specific website for keywords by using the site string in the Google search field. For instance, if you wanted to search this blog specifically, you would enter:
site:writersanctuary.com your keyphrases here
Anyway, building brand reputation has been a constant SEO strategy, long before AI became advanced. Yet again, we have nothing new to focus on for gaining traffic despite AI Overviews.
7. Improve User Experience and Site Speed
A common expert tip to regain traffic after AI is to improve the user experience and the performance of your website. Apparently, this improves conversion rates and boosts visitor retention.
In reality, site speed has been a ranking factor for Google since 2010. I’ve written a slew of articles for both Textbroker and private clients as a freelance writer over the years about the impact of performance and speed. This is nothing new.
The only difference is that the user experience for Google also included mobile devices in 2018. Content had to load quickly and be easy to read on a 5″ screen.
That means you’ll often find performance audits that include aspects such as the typeface being too difficult to read because of background color, links too closely together and difficult to tap with a finger, or paragraphs that are too long (wall of text).
This is yet another example of basic SEO and not really centered on gaining traffic as AI Overviews continues to display your content.
8. Implement Video Content
Google and AI Overviews often use YouTube videos as part of search results. Both of these platforms will analyze the transcripts of the video and show them to searchers. In fact, one of my videos has a ton of watch time during a specific section where I show how to do something.
And yes, the vast majority of the views on that particular video come from the external source of Google, according to YouTube analytics.
Since 2006, Google has slowly been integrating YouTube videos into search results. This was shortly after Google directly bought the company for more than $1.6 billion. So, experts have been pushing you to make videos part of the content strategy for about two decades.
Nowadays, YouTube plays a massive role in Google search results, including AI Overviews.
9. Use More Unique Visuals and Infographics
Visual content, such as unique screenshots and images or infographics are far more difficult for AI Overviews to scrape and summarize. Well, that is, until Google rolls out an update for the AI to properly scan and collect data from graphics.
It’s not far from doing that now, and it’s only a matter of time before infographics become part of a summarized overview.
In any case, infographics have been an effective form of content for many years. In fact, humans retain visual information over text at a rate of 60,000 times faster.
Although I don’t use a lot of infographics on my blogs, I’ve made them for clients with stunning success. The best part is that you can make infographics for free with something like Canva. The hardest part is pulling together relevant information for your topic.
10. Use Aggregator Sites
Aggregator sites are those that collect content from a wide assortment of sources to bring them all to one platform for the convenience of the user.
For instance, Blogarama is one of the oldest blog directories on the Internet. It still has a large user base, and it’s free to list your website. For one of my sites, Blogarama brought in more visitor traffic than all of the social media platforms combined in 2025.
With aggregator sites, you don’t have to worry about AI Overviews taking away your traffic. The people who use them browse through what’s available, much like how we used to do with newspapers back in the day.
At any rate, aggregator sites are nothing new and have been suggested for bloggers to grow their audience for years.
11. Utilize Push Notifications
Push notifications are those little pop-up messages you get when a new piece of content is published from the source. For instance, enabling the “notification bell” in YouTube will send you push notifications when your favorite YouTuber uploads a new video.
Blogs have similar tools available, where the subscriber will get notified when a new post is published. I use them on all of my websites in the event someone wants to follow the blog. This is one of the many reasons why I try to keep publishing on a routine schedule.
Anyway, using push notifications can help with traffic even if AI Overviews is summarizing your content regularly. Only humans (at the moment) subscribe to websites in such a fashion, meaning you’re getting a more focused audience interested in your work.
The reality is that push notifications are more than 3x likely for opt-ins than email or newsletters. It’s an effective way of targeting human readers, especially when AI is killing off search traffic. The trick is to get more people to visit the site to opt-in in the first place.
Push notifications have been around for more than a decade, so it’s not a new tactic to avoid the damage of AI Overviews.
12. Add Schema Markup to Content
Schema markup essentially tells search engines what the content is and how to categorize it in search. It’s kind of like reading a blurb to get an idea of what the story is before you open the book.
I recently finished a case study where I demonstrated the power of schema markup and why you should include it in as many blog posts as possible. The average position of content during search improved by 31.78%, and it takes less than a few minutes to implement.
Schema markup has been around for quite some time to improve SEO in general. It’s often overlooked, especially by new bloggers, but it has great potential to help the visibility of the content. Since 2011, creators have been using one form or another of schema.
In reality, it’s not some new advantage over AI Overviews – it’s simply good SEO practice, and has been for a decade and a half.
13. Answer Quickly and Avoid Filler and Fluff
One of the only real pieces of advice I see from experts about gaining traffic when AI Overviews exist is to clarify headings and answer the main question as quickly as possible. That means polishing up the sections of a blog post to be more detailed overall.
The onset of AI also means focusing on getting rid of filler and fluff. This was a tactic I learned in 2012 when working with online clients, and it’s especially vital when combating redundant phrasing.
Redundancy is when you make the same point several times throughout the piece, only worded differently. A lot of beginning freelancers do this in order to meet a required word count.
Now, heading structure and addressing user intent as quickly as possible have been important aspects of delivering high-quality content for many years. So, it’s not exactly the AI-beating tip some might lead you to believe.
Still, it’s the only thing I can find that is even remotely possible to get shown more often in AI Overviews, so it might help you gain a bit of traffic overall.
Rehashing the Same SEO Tactics as Before
When all is said and done, there really aren’t too many tips about getting traffic back from AI Overviews. All of the expert advice online is simply rehashing the same SEO techniques we’ve been using for years.
The only difference is that AI Overviews takes away a huge chunk of the traffic we built up prior to 2023.
My advice is to keep putting maximum effort into all those search engine optimization techniques and focus more on your human audience rather than appeasing Google. Don’t look at the numbers from years past and pay attention to month-to-month growth.
Yes, there are some topics you can cover that AI hasn’t claimed yet, such as “best of” articles and some reviews. But it’s only a matter of time before Google jumps on those as well. Write for your target audience, not the algorithm.
Push notifications, aggregators, email marketing, forum participation, Pinterest, and YouTube are probably your best bets to improve traffic numbers outside of AI Overviews. Today, start working toward direct marketing to promote your blog. We can’t rely on search engines alone.
This doesn’t mean you should ignore SEO. You’ll still drive some traffic from Google. All I’m saying is to make sure you diversify your reach and focus more on directly connecting to your readers.
Is It Worth Creating a Blog Nowadays?
There’s no doubt that blogging is still an effective form of marketing. However, it’s not as cut-and-dried as it was a decade ago. It takes more of a focused effort to get your content seen. And it all starts with providing the best content you can to engage that audience.
Besides, a blog is a great base of operations where you can share your best works, published books, products, and more. In fact, you can easily build a page similar to Linktree with far more capabilities.
The most vital part of developing a blog is retaining your human audience. It may take a bit of time to get people to subscribe to newsletters or perhaps your push notifications. However, those individuals are most likely to buy your products over a random researcher on Google.
So, absolutely, build your blog. Put in the best SEO practices, but always write for your audience.
AI Overviews and Traffic Acquisition
In the beginning, AI Overviews were a bit limited. You could get away with long-tail keywords, as the AI didn’t have an answer yet. However, the database for AI Overviews continues to grow, and a lot of those long-tail keywords are being scraped by AI. That means long-tail, bottom-funnel keywords are continuing to be consumed by Google. Eventually, they won’t work as well, either.
Sharing first-hand experiences might seem like Google is emphasizing anecdotal information over facts. Part of EEAT is to share personal stories and first-hand experiments to build trust. However, you’ll gain far more traction if you quote or link to high-quality sources to highlight your points. It’s the same as before AI: always cite credible sources in your content.
Although AI Overviews does cut heavily into monthly traffic, you’ll still have people visiting the page as a source or avoiding AI altogether and finding your pages in the search results. Of course, this also depends on your site’s industry or niche, the quality of the content, the topics you cover, and what SEO-friendly tactics you implement.
SEO Is an Uphill Slog
Google hasn’t made SEO a very easy thing to master. Just when you think you have something figured out, Google rolls out an update that changes the landscape. Although it’s not as easy to build a successful blog today as it was 10 years ago, it’s still a great way to connect to your specific audience.
Focus on human readers while providing detailed and high-quality content.
While you may never see the same traffic numbers prior to the release of AI Overviews, you’ll still reach human readers. It’s often a difficult process, but the rewards have the potential to be incredibly great.
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