Source: Search Engine Journal
Google's AI Overviews are concentrating engagement among a subset of frequent adopters who click through to sources 3.5x more than casual users—a pattern that shows the feature is creating two distinct consumer cohorts rather than democratizing search behavior. For CMOs, visibility in AI Overviews isn't a replacement for traditional search rankings; it's a modifier that rewards brands already winning with engaged audiences who treat summaries as starting points, not endpoints. The strategic risk isn't being excluded from Overviews—it's assuming they've changed consumer intent when they've mostly just stratified it.