Most Perth business owners have noticed something different when they search on Google. The answer appears before the links do. That is not a glitch. It’s a structural shift in how search works, and it is moving fast.
AI overviews now appear in 48% of Google searches in the US, and the pattern is consistent here. The longer and more specific your search query, the more likely you are to get an AI-generated answer instead of a list of blue links. For businesses that have built their digital presence around driving web traffic, that traffic is falling off a cliff, and it’s going to keep falling.
In Episode 24 of Raising The Bar, Mel Strutt and Monique Jecks get into what is actually happening in search right now, what it means for businesses seeing sharp drops in website visits, and why an established retail client whose web traffic collapsed but whose online sales went up 180% tells you everything you need to understand about the messy middle.
If your leads are still coming in, you are probably fine. If they are not, this episode tells you where to look first.
Key Takeaways:
- 48% of Google searches now serve an AI overview first: The top real estate in search has fundamentally changed. Traditional sponsored links are being pushed below the AI overview, and the informational queries that used to drive website traffic are now being answered without anyone clicking through.
- Web traffic dropping does not always mean your business is in trouble: The pool equipment client saw web traffic and phone calls fall sharply while online sales went up 180%. The messy middle, where customers research using AI and then search directly for what they want, means the path to purchase has changed, not disappeared.
- Brand searches are holding and likely increasing: When AI recommends you, people search for you by name. Informational traffic is disappearing but conversion-intent traffic is staying consistent. The businesses appearing in AI recommendations are seeing brand searches go up.
- Niche down harder than you think you need to: Broad key terms are losing their power. The businesses cutting through in AI overviews are the ones demonstrating specific, deep expertise. A European car mechanic in Midland beats a car mechanic. A four-wheel drive specialist beats mechanics.
- Track your citations, not just your traffic: Google Tag Manager now shows which of your pages are being cited by AI tools. This tells you where you are being mentioned even when people are not clicking through, and it tells you what to double down on.
- The one thing to do this month: Get clear on what you are genuinely the best at and make sure your content demonstrates that expertise as specifically and authentically as possible. The cheap keyword leads are starting to dry up. The businesses that win from here are the ones AI can confidently recommend.
Raising The Bar is a fortnightly podcast hosted by Mel Strutt, delivering blunt, experience-backed marketing guidance for Australian business owners. Joined by Monique Jecks, they address what matters, call out the fluff and raise the standard of what marketing must deliver for your bottom line.
Episode Transcript:
We’re back with another episode of Raising the Bar and everyone is saying that digital is changing. What’s actually changed in the last year?
A lot has changed in the last year and that is mostly that anyone who has popped onto Google, where we all still seem to go to search, has noticed AI Overview. So the thing that kind of automatically answers your questions is coming up again and again and again.
The big piece is that that top real estate that everyone wants is absolutely dominating. The stats out of the US that have finally become available show it’s 48% of searches are now served an AI Overview. That’s a massive change in the landscape.
It feels like more to me though.
I mean, these statistics are estimates and because we can’t actually see the clicks and conversions or how those things happen, it sits into this beautifully ambiguous Google world. But I just think you’ve got to think of this practically and if you’re seeing it nearly every search you have, then it’s a good indication that it’s there. There is one difference when we’ve been doing different types of searches: if you do a traditional key term search, so you’re still just saying, for example, mechanic Midland, you are probably going to get a traditional view, your two sponsored links that sit up the top, then your traditional organic results, and probably your Google Business Profile sitting on the side. But when you do a longer search query, what we used to refer to as the longtail key terms, that’s when you’re actually getting the AI Overview. So who is the best mechanic in Midland, or what’s the best mechanic for European cars in Perth? When it’s that longer tail kind of instruction, I’m looking for something more specific, then you’re going to see the AI Overview a lot more.
Yeah. And so a lot of our clients, we’ve seen across a lot of our clients that their visits to their website have kind of dropped off and it seems to be happening quite fast. What’s going on there?
So it was predicted. We did record an episode and actually that was the one that went on to be a Kochie’s Business Builders article around your AI isn’t eating your search, but the visibility is disappearing. The idea there is that we’re not getting served these traditional links that would take people to a website. We’re now getting the answers in this AI Overview and no one needs to click through. So that’s the statistic we’re seeing. Web traffic is absolutely falling off a cliff for some clients. I’m not terrified by that because web traffic is not a conversion. So what we need to be thinking about is obviously we all want to appear in that AI Overview and no one knows the absolute answer to that, but we have some ideas and I’m going to in a couple of episodes give all the research. We’ll have about six months of research I can give. But the bigger issue we’re seeing in search is not the web traffic because that’s always been a bit of a vanity stat. You could have bots hitting your web page. You could have articles that never sell you anything. The real change is probably the fact that adverts that used to hold that number one real estate, those two blue sponsored links, are very infrequently now appearing at the top of the search. They’re actually being pushed below the AI Overview. Google would say they’re serving them above and below the AI Overview in most cases and inside the AI Overview. So there are pay-per-click ads inside AI Overviews. We’ll talk about that in another episode. But ultimately, that real estate changing is also going to change the way that your ads are getting interacted with. And I think that’s the bigger concern for people.
So people still need Google. But what’s the new game here?
So this is the GEO argument. What we would say to people is your website still is your fundamental asset and most of the work is still being done by your website answering those longer tail key terms. A lot of the work is being done by review sites and getting that traffic through. This is to appear organically in that AI Overview. But the new game is you have to niche and niche hard so that those longer tail key terms are actually specific to you. What we are going to talk about is that there’s this messy middle now that even marketers won’t be able to solve the way we have been solving results. We were in these beautiful privileged positions just six months ago where we could say that was from a pay-per-click ad and we know it was this particular ad and this was Mary and this is what she ordered. How much was that worth for you? That attribution is going to change quite dramatically because the tools aren’t quite there yet and the introduction of the thing that actually used to exist in traditional search but now is even bigger, which is the messy middle. The reason I say to have an absolute niche is because it’s easier to double down and be the absolute expert on something and really appear credible for that.
I want to explain the messy middle first and then it will make sense. So we have a pool equipment supplier as a client. They’re fantastic and one of the best things about them is they’ll answer any question for you. Absolute expert, fast replies. You actually can’t believe you get that service and ultimately they sell just a piece of equipment, not the advice. What we saw is a drop off a cliff. Plenty of blogs on this page, how-tos, FAQs, we’ve always written that and we’ve ranked really well for SEO and done well in pay-per-click, but web traffic fell off a cliff. The client reported a drop and when we check in, phone calls are down. Not phone calls for do you have this in stock, but phone calls of hey, I’ve got this and it’s not working. They’ve all fallen off a cliff. So we do our investigation ready for our meeting and web sales are way up. We have kept this data for all of our clients for nearly over a year now and it’s what their website actually is cited for. Ahrefs, a tool we use, gives us the ability to actually look at the term they were searched for. In this particular client we have a situation where in December 2024, in the very early days of AI Overview, she had one citation for something like chlorinator not working, like how would I fix a chlorinator. Then I think by the next month it was 24 citations and today, in August 2026, we had 111 citations, mostly from AI Overview but across a range of other chat bots as well. There was some ChatGPT in there and some Perplexity. That sheer volume of growth, I love going across it, it’s like this giant accordion just comes out. Wow, that’s how AI Overview is predominantly answering it. So what does that actually mean for the consumer? That exact question about the chlorinator not working now doesn’t just come up with an advert or an organic search which lands on this client’s best price full equipment page where you just phone her and she’d diagnose it for you. It now starts answering the question for you. So instead it’s telling you what this is and what is this saying and how has this happened. And it keeps going through those questions. We’re seeing all of these longer tail queries start to come through and then what happens is it’s giving them a result and saying to fix that you would buy this. What has that resulted in for the client? Web searches are down, her phone calls for informational requests are down, but her web sales are up 180%. Why? Because the messy middle that we can’t track now is going: I found what I needed using AI and I’ve just Googled what it is I want. They’ve then found that on her website through a traditional shopping search and they’ve inquired and purchased, which is a good thing for online sales. But they might not always be the best type of sales because people are sometimes getting the wrong advice from the AI tool and then buying the wrong product. That becomes its own challenge. But in this case you can see that messy middle evolving and that’s the biggest change I think we all need to get used to. So informational searches are now definitely not going to websites. Those old traditional blogs of what’s the best stretch for back pain, you’re just going to get that answer. You’re not going to see those web hits as a physio anymore. But what you are going to see is that after that, when they search who are the best three physios in this particular suburb, you’re probably going to get presented those based on review sites or based on the fact that you might have recorded YouTube content on that particular injury.
So yeah, I think that messy middle and the inability to track is going to be a massive challenge for our industry. My biggest advice around that is just to not fall for those traditional black hat tactics and to stay calm about it. People have got to explore and understand this and the Google tools and the tools that sit around it all need to evolve.
So that client is pretty positive because although there’s been drop off, something else has picked up. How do people know when they’ve actually got a real problem right now with the changes in digital?
We’re really lucky in our case because we invested a lot in that lead sheet. A lead sheet is every inquiry coming in, whether it’s a website form or a phone call, we were able to track it and we’re actually able to see whether it’s a marketing qualified lead or not. So what we want to say is okay, if the web traffic’s dropped off but the leads are fairly consistent, and I mean at the same time we’re going through a pretty significant cost of living crisis and the economy is changing shape and interest rates are due to go up again very shortly. So we’ve got to counter that there might be some decline depending on the client’s product. But with no excuses, if your leads are fairly consistent and there has been that web traffic drop off, things are probably okay. But if leads have had a very sharp decline and there’s not other explanations for it, I would suggest you’re probably doing more Google ads than you were doing SEO work. And at this point in time, although Google has ads that can appear in AI Overview, they’re not very refined yet. So you haven’t got a counter to that if you hadn’t historically invested in the right type of content. It could be a bit alarming at the moment, but look at the actual marketing qualified lead data that you’re getting and the inquiries.
How are they still getting those MQLs coming through if search has gone down?
So the web traffic has dropped because you’re not getting those inquiries where someone would click on the blue link for an answer to those informational questions. So if you search how to test a chlorinator in a pool pump, that’s no longer making it to the website. But what we are getting now is that as people find the information they’re finding, when they got the brand of pool pump they wanted, they are still doing the brand search. We know people were still Googling the specific brand of pool pump that they wanted. We also note that brand searches have gone up quite considerably. So people searching for the actual name. For example, who is the best physiotherapist in this area? It recommends three. Then you’re going to get the brand search. So although you don’t get all that other traffic hitting your website from those informational searches where people are not actually engaged in the buying decision at that point, they’re just looking for information, you’re losing all of that. That’s all getting answered by AI. But when it comes down to the pointy end of the funnel and they’ve found what they want, they’re doing a brand search and they’re finding you. So we’re seeing that the conversions are still consistent.
So that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. Brand search.
No, it’s probably increased actually and probably will increase if you’re part of those recommendations.
Is there anything else businesses could be doing to see where their traffic’s going right now?
Yeah, so we are now tracking AI citations. Lots of our reporting uses a quite expensive tool called Ahrefs but most digital agencies would have it and we’ve been tracking citations for some time. That helps us know what’s being searched and in what platforms or LLM. So is it AI Overview, AI Mode, Gemini, ChatGPT? That helps. But in terms of volume, I think it was last month in August, Google in their Google Tag Manager, sorry to get super nerdy, they actually released a new ability to be able to see which of your pages get the most traffic from those LLMs and from different AI tools. And so what I’m really loving to do for the client is say, hey, you saw a decline over here, but we’ve seen all of these citations. So this is where you’re getting other traffic now and you’re getting mentioned much more, but it isn’t necessarily coming to you. So they don’t click through. But what you can see is these are the pages that have been cited. These informational pages are really getting cited a lot. The kind of sad thing about that is I don’t think they’re pages that are necessarily going to sell things. So it comes to my other point of niching down a little bit so you actually get mentioned, and that becomes our new big objective, that brand mention. We played with citations, which is when you have that little indicator that just says you were referenced, but now you need to start getting mentioned. And that becomes our new big objective.
So if there’s only one thing a business owner can do this month, what is it?
I think the most important thing is not to panic about it. But I think it’s definitely time, and I know I’m on a bit of a road show over the next two months to talk to our clients about the changes we’re seeing, about what we’re doing to counter that for them. In terms of what I would say people need to be looking for, I really like the idea of making sure you know your niche. I’ve mentioned this in a podcast before and I need to belt it into people. Apparently in all my leadership training they say you just keep repeating the same message and eventually people listen. I’m still waiting for that. But the key message is that the more you specify what you’re really amazing at, you will win. We have been able to cheat a little bit by just having these broad key terms that people could search. So car mechanic in Midland. But now you might need to specify what you’re really good at, like European car mechanic in Midland or four-wheel drive specialist, and actually have a bunch of data to back that up and maybe some informational videos around that because the ability to just put a key term search in there now isn’t going to be as prevalent. More than ever, you need to demonstrate your expertise in something as authentically as possible.
So there are lots of things we’ve said in lots of podcasts that are converging and becoming quite true today. I think it’s definitely time to go, the cheap keyword leads are probably going to start to stagger out and I need to start recognising what it is I’m the best at and have the knowledge of, and be willing to impart that knowledge to show the AI models.
And I know that’s actually really depressing for some of our clients, but hey, I had to start a podcast so they can go hard too.
Let’s get to work.
