Why do good rankings bring fewer visitors now?
Because a growing share of queries is answered without anyone clicking.
AI overviews appear in roughly 20 to 25 per cent of searches in early 2026. A study of Wikipedia from the same year estimates a drop of around 15 per cent in daily traffic for affected English-language articles.
The consequence is uncomfortable: rank one is no longer the goal, being cited is. Answer engines lift passages that stand on their own and carry a figure with a source. A Princeton-led study of generative engines found that statistics and quotations raise a source's visibility by up to 40 per cent — while keyword stuffing achieved nothing.
Sources: Princeton-Studie zu generativen Suchmaschinen (GEO)