We have spoken at length about Google AI Overviews and how they are taking a significant amount of organic traffic away from the open web by providing answers based on sources of questionable credibility and containing errors. Well, SEO expert Aleyda Solís warns us that there is more going on in Google Search thanks to a study.
Its main conclusion is that when it comes to identifying those responsible for Google’s poor organic performance, you should not only look at AI Overviews. Her study states that the reconfiguration of Google Search has been more extensive and shows that the search engine has been set up so that users click even more on sponsored results. In this way, ads would also be behind Google’s overall move toward zero click. That said, it will continue using your content without issue or embarrassment.
By comparing January 2025 with January 2026 using Similarweb data, she has found that text ads have surged consistently across the 4 categories analyzed. Product verticals were doubly impacted by advertising because they receive more text ads and also shopping ads.
Solís states that the impact of ads is large (from 3 to 16% in some categories) and consistent across all of them, while the impact of AI Overviews varied from one to another.
The SEO expert concludes that the move is working perfectly for Google. A large number of companies that have seen their organic results decline (such as Amazon or Walmart) are not hesitating to increase their ad spend to recover it and for that reason she speaks of “organic to paid migration”.
The study’s conclusions are to stop attributing the traffic drop solely to AI Overviews, to study the statistics of your topic or niche since they vary drastically from one to another, to invest in the destinations that generate organic clicks in your SERP or to recalibrate the paid strategy, among others.
The results of the study are consistent with what one can observe at a glance in Google and moreover align with Google’s major bet on AI to shield itself from competitors such as OpenAI or Anthropic. AI requires enormous amounts of money due to the costly computing infrastructure it demands. This is why Google has even just issued a rare 100 year bond to raise money now.
* Original article written in Spanish, translated with AI and reviewed in English by Jorge Mediavilla.
