Local Memo: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks, More Google Bug Reports, Evaluating Ranking Factors

Evidence that AI Overviews Reduce Traffic to Websites

The News Mark Berrera, VP of SEO at Newfold Digital, shared the results of some SERP research on LinkedIn that paints a stark picture of the impact of AI Overviews (AIOs) on web traffic. Berrera’s finding shows that links shown in AIOs receive less than half the clicks of the link shown in the first organic position below the AIO section. In comparison, data from the previous year showed that CTR was four times higher for the first result when AIOs did not appear.

In a notable contrast, Berrera’s data shows that impressions have increased 88% year over year with the introduction of AIOs for the keywords included in the study, whereas clicks have declined by 33%. The finding seems to contradict Google’s claims that AIOs lead to a net increase in search traffic by increasing the volume of searches.

Back in February, Kevin Indig published a review of 19 studies on the impact of AIOs. Among other findings, it showed that AIOs are more likely to appear for informational long-tail queries of five words or more, and that when they appear, AIOs take up more than 40% of the screen on desktop and mobile. As for CTR, several studies showed a decline, but not as dramatic as Berrera reports, and in some cases CTR increased when AIO included a citation to the site.

As cited in Kevin Indig’s study, this chart from Surfer SEO shows that AIOs include an average of five cited sources.

What This Means Understanding the full impact of AIO continues to be a challenge. The feature is still new and has not settled into a predictable set of behaviors — if indeed it ever will. Regardless, it makes sense to think of AIOs as a reinforcement and expansion of the zero-click user experience Google has been building for many years. If AI provides the answer to an informational query, it seems logical that a user will be much less likely to click through to a website. Just showing up in the cited sources does have value, though. And it’s worth remembering that this is not a zero-sum game. Many queries will leave a user wanting to find out more, and of course, many local queries are commercial or transactional or both, so even if AIOs do appear, users will need to interact with the business at some point.

Some Fake Reviews Reappearing on Google

The News On March 28, Google issued a notice on the Google Business Profile help forum , stating that “some removed reviews may be resurfacing due to a technical issue.” The issue appears to be that reviews removed from Google profiles over the past few years on suspicion of being fake have been reappearing on those profiles due to a bug. This is a known issue that Google is addressing.

In related news, many users are reporting an apparent bug where edits to a Google Business Profile result in the message, “Your edit was not approved.” This is happening with simple edits that are usually approved automatically. So far no resolution to the issue has been announced.

Courtesy Nevena Ivanova / Search Engine Roundtable

What This Means In addition to the spike in reverifications we’ve discussed recently, marketers should be aware that they may be impacted by these new issues.

Review Volume and Recency Matter for Local Ranking

The News In some recent presentations at the Localogy conference and LocalU, Andrew Shotland shared findings related to local search ranking that are worth highlighting. Luckily, for those who missed the presentations, Shotland posted the slides and a summary on LinkedIn. Shotland studied week-by-week rankings for ten local business categories in ten cities, using Semrush’s grid-based rank tracking tool and ultimately gathering 1 million total grids.

Across all industries, having more reviews correlated with stronger local rankings. Review recency was also found to be a significant factor, with businesses ranking higher across all industries the more reviews per day they received. Ratings had less of an impact, largely because Google’s average ratings are already so high across the board (about 4.55 out of 5 stars for Shotland’s dataset). Top performers in the study also tended to list more than five Google categories.

In addition to GBP, the study also looked at on-page factors for domains linked to the business’s profile, finding that more backlinks, the use of keywords in meta tags, headings, and site URLs, and proper use of targeted anchors all had a positive impact.

Courtesy Andrew Shotland

What This Means We know from Local Search Ranking Factors and other studies, including those conducted by SOCi, that factors like review volume, review recency, and secondary categories can have a positive impact on local ranking; Shotland’s study helps to validate that these findings still apply today, and to highlight the specific performance targets that can help you outperform your competitors.