AI Overviews: Organic Traffic Drop? The Numbers from 20 E-Commerce Sites
Summarize this article with AI
« Stéphane, I lost 820 sessions in 30 days »
A client calls me one Tuesday morning.
François, founder of Aircool-Shop, a high-performance PC cooling site.
15,000 euros invested in editorial content in 2024.
Slow but steady growth.
Then, in March 2025, traffic starts to erode.
He shows me his Search Console graphs.
2,300 organic clicks per day in February.
1,480 clicks in April.
A 35% drop in 60 days. That’s serious.
I track 15 sites per week.
Since Google rolled out AI Overviews across Europe in early 2025, I’m seeing the same scénario at some of my e-commerce clients.
But not all of them.
François first thought it was a penalty.
He rebuilt his internal linking, fixed tags, boosted his ad budget.
Nothing moved.
The problem wasn’t his content—it was his SERP position.
On his flagship query « best 360mm CPU cooler, » the AI Overview now takes up the entire mobile screen before the first organic link.
His page, once in position 2, gets pushed below the fold.
Click-through rate collapses.
His page isn’t worse. It’s just invisible.
What the community has observed since March 2025
On Reddit, the r/RankWithAI subreddit compiles dozens of testimonies.
The feedback varies.
Some niches are losing badly.
Others are holding steady.
A few are gaining over 20%.
I’ll summarize what comes up most:
- High-tech and IT: buying guides and comparison pages are tanking. Up to 41% drop in 3 months.
- Supplements: YMYL rules mean AI Overviews rely on institutional sources. Pure e-commerce players see traffic collapse.
- Fashion and accessories: it drops a bit, because purchase queries are less covered by generative AI.
- DIY and tools: no impact. AI can’t distinguish very specialized technical specs.
- Pet products: some sites gain up to 15% traffic, because their « beginner guides » are cited in the AI Overview.
Marie Haynes sums it up well: « AI Overviews don’t cannibalize traffic, they displace it. »
Traffic doesn’t vanish. It just shifts targets.
My own data tells the same story.
20 e-commerce sites examined: before and after figures
Since January 2025, I’ve been tracking 20 e-commerce sites the same way.
Every time: GSC data extraction before and after the massive AI Overviews rollout (March–April 2025), a visibility audit on the top 50 queries, and position tracking with semantic tracking tools.
What I’m seeing with my clients:
- 9 sites out of 20 lost more than 12% organic traffic in 60 days.
- The median drop is 23%.
- Four sites lost more than 35%.
- 7 sites show no significant variation (±5%).
- 4 sites gained between 10% and 27% traffic over the same period.
No single sector is uniformly hit.
In high-tech, two sites collapsed, a third climbed 18%.
The difference doesn’t come down to budget.
It comes down to presence or absence in the AI Overview.
The four winning sites all share common traits.
I detail them below.
But first, let me explain the mechanism.
The mechanism that drives (or tanks) an e-commerce site
Google’s AI Overview is not an enhanced featured snippet. It’s a conversational block that aggregates multiple sources and synthesizes an answer. On mobile, it sometimes takes up 80% of the screen before the first scroll. The first organic link ends up below, with a click-through rate divided by 3 or 4.
What I’ve observed on my client sites:
- As soon as a query has a search volume above 2,000 per month, the AI Overview appears most of the time (89% of cases on mobile, according to a Sistrix study).
- Purely informational pages (guides, comparisons) are the most cannibalized.
- Transactional pages (catégories, product sheets) are less affected, unless the query contains « best, » « review, » « test. »
Result: a site relying 70% on informational traffic to drive sales (the classic guide-to-product funnel) loses its top of funnel. This is what happened to François.
On the flip side, the reverse mechanism exists. If your page is one of the sources cited in the AI Overview, you capture a slice of the « blue » click from the synthesis. That click converts better, because the user is already qualified by the AI’s answer.
The paradox that changes everything: being cited pays more than ranking first
Another client of mine, a women’s fashion e-commerce site, saw traffic jump 27% in 60 days.
While competitors lost 15 to 20%.
Why?
Their pages « how to choose your wedding dress by body type » are cited in 3 heavily-trafficked AI Overviews.
I cross-referenced their GSC data with AI presence reports.
Result: click-through rate on those pages from the SERP jumped 42%, and conversion rate went from 3.8% to 4.9%.
A counterintuitive mechanism.
AI doesn’t steal traffic. It redistributes it.
The site that becomes an AI Overview source gains visibility and qualified clicks.
Warning: it’s not automatic.
Being in position 1 isn’t enough.
I’ve seen top 3 pages never get cited, and position 7 pages appear in the synthesis.
The algorithm looks for the most synthetic and well-structured answer, not necessarily the highest-ranked one.
The 3 actions I apply for my e-commerce clients
Since April, I’ve changed my approach for all my e-commerce clients.
Three work streams:
1. Audit queries with AI Overview.
On the top 50 queries, I identify which ones trigger an AI block.
I use a custom tool coupled with Google’s API.
On average, 32% of transactional queries are affected.
Once identified, I move to step 2.
2. Structure to get cited.
Pages that appear in the AI Overview have one thing in common: a 40-word paragraph that directly answers the question.
No fluff.
A direct, fact-based, bullet-point answer.
I apply the same principle to product pages: a synthetic « Why this product » box at the top of the page, before technical description.
3. Capture post-AI traffic.
For pages that can’t be cited (e.g., YMYL queries or ultra-competitive ones), I don’t fight.
I redirect content budget to long-tail queries where AI doesn’t appear yet.
Result: of the 9 sites that had lost traffic, 6 hit their May 2025 levels again in 45 days.
François applied actions 1 and 2.
His page « best 360mm CPU cooler » is now cited in the AI Overview.
He recovered 94% of lost traffic.
Without a single line of code added.
What I conclude (and what you can do with it)
No, AI Overviews don’t kill e-commerce SEO.
They reshuffle the deck.
Some sites will lose.
Others will explode.
The only variable: are you the source chosen by the AI?
If you’re in e-commerce, stop chasing rankings.
Measure the percentage of your queries that trigger an AI Overview.
Then test one page with a « direct answer » structure and track the evolution in GSC over 4 weeks.
I say it often: « I don’t sell the method. I show the pages. »
In 2025, winning pages speak to both AI and humans.
What niche are you in? Have you measured the gap between your clicks and impressions since March?
Free live audit: your pages vs. AI Overviews
For 45 minutes, I take your site, share my screen, and show you exactly which queries are costing you traffic. You leave with a 3-step action plan. No slides. Just concrete results.
Book a strategic call — 45 minFrequently Asked Questions
How do I know if my site is affected by AI Overviews?
Pull your top 50 queries from Google Search Console over the last 90 days. Manually check each query with a mobile Google search to see if an AI Overview block appears. Note the percentage of queries covered.
Are all e-commerce queries affected?
No. Pure transactional queries (« buy [product] », « price [product] ») are minimally covered. Queries with « best », « review », « guide » trigger the AI Overview over 80% of the time in my observations.
Should I stop writing buying guides?
Absolutely not. You need to structure them to become an AI source: fact-based synthetic answer at the top, reinforced semantic markup, and links to product pages to capture post-AI traffic.
Is appearing in AI Overview only for big brands?
No. I’ve seen small e-commerce product sheets cited because they provided rare, well-executed info. Domain authority matters, but it’s not the only factor.
How long does it take to regain traffic after adapting?
First results show in 4 to 6 weeks. Of the 20 sites tracked, the 6 that regained traffic did so in 31 to 45 days after launching AI-optimized pages.
