Are AI Overviews killing content marketing?

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Are AI Overviews killing content marketing?

Kevin Indig and Eric van Buskirk decided to find out.

They captured screen recordings and think-aloud sessions from 70 people across 400 AI Overview (AIO) encounters.

Then they dug into the data to answer the questions that have haunted us content folks since AIOs went live.

Questions like:

• Are people reading AIOs?

• Are AIOs driving more zero-click searches?

• Does appearing in an AIO drive traffic to your site?

• Does appearing in an AIO build your brand?

• How do you appear in AIOs?

Let’s dive right into the key takeaways from the first-ever UX Study of Google’s AI Overviews…

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🤔 Do people read AIOs?

Anyone else hoping this study was gonna reveal most people scroll right past the AIOs and head to the organic results?

Well, I’ve got bad news…

• Most people click ‘Show more’. 88% of users are expanding truncated AIOs.

• AIOs are holding people’s attention. Users spend an average of 30-45 seconds reading AIOs.

• People are satisfied by AIO results. 40% of questions end with statements like “I usually don’t go past this” or “AIO answers all my questions.”

• People trust the information AIOs give them. When asked to rate how trustworthy they find AIO results on a scale from 1-4, the average user answered 3.4.

So shoving your fingers in your ears and singing “la la la la” is probs not the best move here, no matter where you stand on the content totem pole…

0️⃣ Are AIOs driving more zero-click searches?

They sure are (but there’s a silver lining!).

First, the stats:

Kevin’s previous study says AIOs raise zero-click share from 72% to 76%.

Plus, Search queries without AI Overviews result in twice as many pageviews as those with AI Overviews.

However, Kevin and Eric’s UX study also revealed:

• 4 out of 5 users scrolled past the AIO. So ranking in the first organic or paid slots is still valuable.

• People often want a second opinion. After reading an AIO or Blue Link, 18% of users still opened a Reddit thread, YouTube video, or second organic result “just to double-check.”

• Most answers (81 % on desktop and 78 % on mobile) for transactional and/or commercial queries came from outside the AIO. Users ultimately need to dig into organic links, sponsored results, and featured snippets to find a satisfactory answer to MOFU and BOFU queries.

Cookie-cutter content targeting informational terms? Not as effective as it was a few years ago, for sure.

MOFU and BOFU content? Just as valuable as ever.

🔗 Does appearing in an AIO drive traffic to your site?

Not much 🤷

Just:

• 7.4% of desktop searches resulted in an internal click within an AIO

• 19% of mobile users clicked a citation-related element within the AIO panel (such as a link icon or hyperlinked text)

Obviously, this might change if Google adds more hyperlinks to AIOs. But at the moment, the majority of users who engage with an AIO don’t click links within it. So optimising for them isn’t going to drive more traffic (not directly, at least).

Which begs the question…

🚀 Does appearing in an AIO build your brand?

It does… if your site appears in the top third of the AIO.

Users in this UX study typically only scrolled 20% the way down an AIO on desktop and 49% of the way down on mobile.

Which arguably makes the top third of an AIO the most valuable real estate on the SERP when it comes to brand building.

Plus, the 550 user sessions recorded for this study revealed that a recognised brand, authority site, .gov or .edu was chosen first in 58% of the cases where such a link was present.

Which means:

• The more top-third AIO mentions a company receives, the stronger its brand will become… 

• And the stronger its brand becomes, the more likely it is to receive clicks in AIOs and the organic results…

📈 How do you appear in AIOs?

So, the big question:

How do you optimise for AIO mentions?

I don't think anyone would claim they have a conclusive answer.

But here’s Kevin’s best guess, based on what this study revealed:

I’ve only scratched the surface of what Kevin and Eric’s study covers here.

For the data on how different demographics are interacting with AIOs, how devices are impacting AIO behaviour, and much more…

👉 Read the first-ever UX Study of Google’s AI Overviews here

🫵 What do you think?

Do the findings from this study line up with the way you’ve been interacting with AIOs in your day-to-day life?

Come join the conversation in Top of the Funnel!

p.s. if you enjoyed this content and want to support TOFU then give it a 👍 (or dare I say a💡?) on LinkedIn