AI Overviews have sparked plenty of buzz—and even a touch of panic—in the SEO world, especially during the SGE era, when they appeared in up to 80% of queries.

Many fear that they would siphon off valuable traffic due to their prominent position in the SERPs. But is that really the case?

Let’s explore whether or not investing time in ranking for AI Overviews will deliver the payoff you’re expecting.

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AI Overviews: Are They Worth the Investment to Rank?

The hype is real. And for good reason. 

AI Overviews could one day turn a switch and show for a huge percentage of queries. For now, that isn’t the case. Only about 4% according to our research (more on this below), depending on the industry.

But learning how to rank in AI Overviews won’t hurt your site and may provide indirect benefits like increased brand visibility, indirect traffic opportunities, and enhanced perceived authority. 

That being said, are these benefits significant enough to justify the time and effort required to secure a spot? 

Long answer short — probably not. Here’s why…

1. AIOs Aren’t Super Prevalent

Based on our latest research, AIOs only appear for a small percentage of queries. 

Out of a total sample of 120 million US keywords, AI Overviews only appeared for 5.5 million.

In the US, they currently appear for only 4.6 percent of desktop keywords and 3.9 percent of mobile keywords. 

Based on these statistics, the prevalence of AIOs likely aren’t significant enough to warrant a major shift in your SEO strategy. Their limited reach means they’re unlikely to drastically impact overall organic traffic for most websites.

Recommended Reading: AI Overviews: Measuring the Impact on SEO

2. AIOs Mostly Appear For Informational Keywords

With the exception of some outliers, AI Overviews typically show up for keywords with low search volume.

Based on our Research Grid dataset of over half a billion keywords, the keywords that trigger AIOs are overwhelmingly long-tail and have an informational user intent 92.89 percent of the time.

That means their impact, if any, is primarily on top of funnel keywords that likely have low conversion possibilities. 

Further, the keywords that trigger AIOs across our clients have less than 0.7 percent of traffic potential. This metric refers to the traffic you would receive if you ranked #1 for all your keywords. It was derived by looking at the total traffic potential across several of our clients vs the traffic potential of their keywords that show an AIO.

 

3. AIOs Are Very Volatile

The presence of AI Overviews for any given keyword can fluctuate significantly from day to day, making them an unreliable target for consistent visibility. The same is true for the appearance of a domain’s URLs as AIO sources.

In the chart below, the grey bars represent the number of a domain's tracked keywords that show an AIO on a given day and the blue portion represents the number that have a source from the domain.

 

For example, one major retailer saw AI Overviews appear for their main keywords ranging from a high of 437 keywords to a low of just 125 over a 30-day period. Their URLs’ inclusion in AIO source references also varied widely, from as high as 97 to as low as 8.

A leading B2B SaaS company experienced similar volatility, with AI Overviews showing for between 363 and 135 keywords, while their URLs were referenced in sources anywhere from 169 times to just 64.

These unpredictable swings highlight the challenge of relying on AI Overviews for stable traffic or visibility. 

4. Few AIOs Have Transactional Intent

Once again referencing our Research Grid dataset, only 5.78 percent of keywords triggering AI Overviews have transactional intent within the organic SERP. 

Even among those, most queries are informational rather than product-focused, making them less relevant to users actively looking to make a purchase.

For example, for the query "Immodium A D multisymptom relief," the organic results are clearly transactional (all places to buy this product). However, the AIO is purely informational.

This suggests that AI Overviews are unlikely to significantly impact buyer-driven searches, especially lower in the funnel, further limiting their value for e-commerce or other transaction-oriented strategies.

Conclusion:

While the interest around AI Overviews is understandable, the reality is clear: optimizing specifically for AIOs isn’t typically a worthwhile investment. 

Their limited prevalence, low-value keyword focus, volatility, and lack of transactional intent make them an unreliable and low-ROI opportunity for most SEO strategies.

Ultimately, your time is better spent refining strategies that directly impact traffic, leads, and revenue rather than chasing rankings in AI Overviews.

By the way, many of Google’s SERP features are eating at your traffic and revenue that ARE definitely worth optimizing for - check out the data on Popular Products, Videos, Local, and many other SERP features.

For insight into how AIOs impact your specific site’s traffic and visibility, seoClarity provides detailed AIO tracking & analysis. Request a demo to learn more!

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