Google AI Overviews and B2B: what changed, what the data says, and what to do

I run a PEO comparison site that earned 1,090 impressions in Google in its first months and exactly one click. The pages were ranking. People were seeing them. Google was simply answering the question before anyone needed to visit. That is AI Overviews in one sentence, and it is why so many B2B traffic charts bend the wrong way.

Here is what the research says, and what I would actually do about it.

What AI Overviews are

An AI Overview is the generated summary Google shows above the regular results for many searches. It answers the question in a few sentences and lists a handful of source links beside it. Google's newer AI Mode takes the same idea further: a full conversational answer, with links as supporting material.

These are no longer side experiments. Similarweb found AI Overviews on 43% of US searches in May 2026, up from about 15% a year earlier, and Google said on its Q2 2026 earnings call that AI Mode has passed one billion monthly users.

What the data says about clicks

Three studies are worth knowing, because they measure the problem in different ways and land in the same place.

• People click less. Pew Research tracked the real browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. When an AI summary appeared, they clicked a regular result on 8% of visits, versus 15% when it did not. Only 1% clicked a link inside the summary, and 26% ended their browsing session right there.
• The top result loses the most. Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords and found that the #1 page's click-through rate fell about 58% when an Overview was present (December 2023 versus December 2025). Position two lost about half its clicks.
• Most searches end on Google. SparkToro's analysis of Similarweb data found that 68% of US Google searches ended without a click from January to April 2026, up from about 60% in 2024.

Being cited is the new ranking

The most useful number for B2B comes from Seer Interactive, which tracked 53 brands and 5.4 million queries. On informational searches with an Overview, brands that were cited inside it averaged 2.07% organic click-through. Brands that were not cited averaged 0.94%. Cited brands also earned more paid clicks (15.74% versus 11.19%).

Seer is careful to say this is correlation, not proof, since stronger brands get cited more often. But the direction matters. If an Overview is going to appear anyway, being one of its sources roughly doubles the clicks you keep, and puts your name in front of the buyer even when nobody clicks.

Why B2B feels this more

B2B research is mostly informational: "what is a PEO," "how much does a fractional CMO cost," "Salesforce vs HubSpot for mortgage." Those are exactly the questions Overviews answer best.

And buyers are already comfortable with AI doing the first pass. Forrester's State of Business Buying, 2026 found generative AI tools were the most cited meaningful interaction type when buyers researched purchases. G2's 2025 buyer survey found 79% of B2B buyers say AI search has changed how they research, and 29% now start with an AI tool more often than with Google.

So the shortlist is increasingly formed inside an answer you do not control, before your website gets a visit.

Five things I would do this quarter

• Rewrite your top pages answer-first. Put a two-sentence answer to the page's main question right under the headline. That is the passage an Overview can lift, and it is the passage a skimming buyer reads.
• Match titles to the question. If Search Console shows the page earning impressions for "which PEOs are IRS-certified," the title should say that, not "CPEO Directory."
• Add the facts AI tools like to quote. Specific numbers, dates, named sources and comparison tables. Vague pages are hard to cite.
• Check whether you are cited, not just ranked. Search your 20 most important buyer questions each month and note whose names appear in the Overview. That list is your real competitive set.
• Measure the demand, not the visit. Track branded search in Search Console and add "How did you hear about us?" to your forms. I cover the full dashboard in how to measure zero-click marketing.

What not to do

Do not chase special "AI files" or schema tricks. Google's own documentation for AI features says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: the page needs to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and good SEO fundamentals do the rest.

And do not panic-cut content because traffic dipped. The impressions are still there. The job is to turn them into recognition.

If you are new to the bigger shift, start with what zero-click marketing is. For the practical checklist, see my 10 tips to get found in AI search results.