Google AI Overviews Are Eating Your Traffic: What Indian Brands Must Do Right Now

AI Overviews Have Arrived in India — And They Are Changing Everything

Google's AI Overviews (formerly SGE) rolled out fully in India in late 2025. The impact on organic search traffic has been significant and, for brands that were not prepared, alarming. Informational queries that previously drove consistent traffic are now being answered directly in the search results — before a user ever reaches your website.

The data from Indian SEO practitioners is consistent: sites ranking in positions 1-3 for informational queries are seeing 20-35% traffic reductions for those terms. Transactional and navigational queries have been less affected — for now.

Which Content Types Are Most at Risk

AI Overviews appear most frequently on how-to queries, definition queries, comparison queries, and general information requests. If your SEO strategy relied heavily on "what is X" or "how to do Y" content, you need to rethink your approach immediately.

Content that remains relatively protected from AI Overviews includes brand-specific content, original research and data, highly opinionated takes from recognised experts, local business information, and product-specific pages.

The AEO Strategy: Getting Cited IN the AI Overview

The new SEO opportunity is not just ranking in organic results — it is getting cited as a source within the AI Overview itself. This is what we call Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), and it is rapidly becoming a core part of every serious SEO strategy for Indian brands.

To get cited in AI Overviews, your content needs to be structured as direct, authoritative answers to specific questions. This means using FAQ schema, implementing clear question-and-answer formatting, building topical authority through content clusters, and maintaining E-E-A-T signals throughout your site.

The Delhi and Indian Market Specific Angle

For local businesses in Delhi and across India, the AI Overview impact is somewhat different. Local queries — "best digital marketing agency in Rohini" or "SEO services in Connaught Place" — are still serving local pack results and map listings prominently. This makes Google My Business optimisation even more critical than it was before.

What To Do Right Now

The immediate priority is auditing your current organic traffic to identify which pages have been affected by AI Overviews. In Google Search Console, filter for pages that have seen click drops despite maintaining impression volume — these are the ones where AI Overviews are intercepting traffic.

For affected content, the strategy is to go deeper. AI Overviews provide surface-level answers. Your content needs to provide the kind of nuanced, expert-level information that a user needs to read the full article for — not just a paragraph summary.