• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, 10 hours ago

One year after Google released AI Overviews, data gets published showing total search impressions rose more than 49%, highlighting a dramatic shift in how people seek and find information.

Jim Yu, founder and CEO of BrightEdge, said the assumption had always been that AI would kill or cannibalize traditional search, but the data suggests otherwise.

People are spending a lot more time on Google search. “That was a big surprise,” Yu said. “People also are interacting a lot more with Google search, but the clickthrough rates to publishers and marketers has significantly declined.” That means more impressions.

However, click-through rates -- which analyze the number of people that click through to a publisher site -- fell 30%. Despite the decline to publisher sites, AI has “turbocharged” the use of Google search and the company still maintains nearly 90% market share.

ChatGPT also grew another 21% during the past month, and Perplexity and, in comparison, Google’s Gemini contributes roughly one-tenth the size of ChatGPT in referral traffic. AI overviews appear in about 11% of queries, up 22% since the tool’s debut, according to the data.

“AI is being triggered inside Google,” he said, adding that AI Overviews is being triggered differently by industry. The strongest AI presence has been in healthcare, education, B2B and insurance.

Travel and entertainment continue to rise quickly, and social commerce (scommerce) has seen a smaller amount of AI overviews since the launch.

When MediaPost asked Yu to describe the impact on advertising, he said “there still haven't been major changes to the ad formats on Google as a result of AI Overviews,” but added that it “does drive a lot more impressions.”

Advertisers look at different types of keywords and seems to be much more opportunity to get ahead of the organic clicks.

“The ad format itself, the vast majority are still the classic types of types of CPC formats,” Yi said, adding that the ads now sit around the AI Overviews. “It probably will evolve over time as some of the newer engines like Perplexity do more with different types of ad formats and play with more formats that are inside the AI experience.”

For now, on Google AI Overviews, ads are not inside the conversation.

Even without ads in AI Overviews, the platform still helps users “progress through the shopping journey,” he said. “Clicks will still be very prominent and very conversion worthy and very intent driven, maybe even more so, because as the user or the shopper gets further down the funnel, as they see and interact more and more with the AI assisted experience at the top and at the side, there are still the classic sort of fast response kind of CPC or sort of paid click search ads.”

For marketers AI Overviews means new features that will need measurement techniques for not only clicks, but also impressions. In AI, metrics like mentions and citations also need are required.