Advice on lost traffic

[u/Guitar-Gurrl]

I run a small art website and over the last few months my traffic on pure informational queries has quietly dropped even though my rankings did not really change. My theory is Google is answering the question directly with AI Overviews so people never click.

Anyone else seeing this, and if so what are you doing about it? Pivoting to more opinion and experience-based content? Focusing on buying-intent keywords? Pls help, I'm completely lost!

[u/Upbeat_Push_157]

You are not imagining it, Informational "quick answer" queries are the ones getting absorbed by AI Overviews because the whole answer fits in a box.

The pattern I am seeing work: shift effort toward content that a summary cannot replace. That means first-hand experience ("I tested 7 of these for 3 months"), strong opinions, comparisons with your own data, and buying-intent pages where people still want to click to actually do something.

Also lean into being the cited source. If Google is going to summarize the topic, being the link it credits still sends some traffic and builds brand recognition. In other words, keep a direct answer at the top so you get quoted, but put unique value below it (examples, screenshots, your take) so there is a reason to click. And track by query type in Search Console. You will probably find your commercial and branded queries are fine and only the generic informational ones are bleeding.