SEO in the Age of AI: Adapting to Google's Changes

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In recent months, even Italian tools such as SEOZoom have reported that Google is changing the way it presents search results, moving toward integrated summary answers rather than a simple list of links. At the same time, studies conducted by Semrush show that the percentage of queries that trigger "AI summaries" (AI Overviews) is growing rapidly, from about 6 percent to more than 13 percent in just a few months, and that these changes profoundly affect organic traffic and click-through rates.

What does this mean in detail? In the following article we will explore how Google generates these responses, what risks and opportunities they entail, and how you can adapt your SEO strategies to stay visible even in the era of synthetic results.

In this article we will explore:

What are Google's "synthetic results"/ AI Overviews
What is the situation in Italy, with examples and observations
What are the impacts for sites and SEO campaigns
Concrete strategies for surviving and thriving in the era of synthetic results

1. What are "synthetic results" / AI Overviews (Google)

An AI Overview is a summary generated by AI models (e.g., Google Gemini) that Google places at the top of the SERP for certain queries, presenting a concise answer with references to useful sources.
Unlike a classic "featured snippet" (which extracts a passage of text from a single page), an AI Overview attempts to consolidate information from multiple sources to give a unified view.
Google is gradually expanding the use of these summaries in many countries, including Italy.
Often the queries for which an AI Overview appears are those with informational intent (definitions, explanations, comparisons). According to Semrush, about 88.1 percent of queries that trigger AI Overviews are informative.
The share of queries that show AI Overviews is growing strongly: as of March 2025, ~13.14% of queries analyzed by Semrush activated this feature (it was ~6.5% at the beginning of the year).

Source: Semrush

2. The state in the Italian market: what we observe

In Italy, the introduction of AI Overviews is relatively recent but underway: some sites and SEO specialists already report changes in traffic, especially for informational content.
DeepSEO notes that Italian AI Overviews currently provide primarily summary text, so elements that are difficult to summarize (graphs, tables, storytelling, case studies) may become a point of differentiation for the original site.
Calton suggests that for local/franchise brands, AI Overview changes the customer journey: the user may already get the answer in the SERP and not click further.
In Italy, there seems to be more resistance for vertical and specialized content: sites that offer added value and depth (technical content, exclusive data, analytics) seem to hold up better than more generic content that risks being "recapitulated" by AI. This is in observations gathered in national SEO communities and blogs, but in my opinion premature and unreliable.

3. Impacts and risks to sites / SEO campaigns

Here are the main effects that various analyses indicate as observable (or potential):

Impact / risk	Detail / evidence	Italian notes possible
Reduction in organic traffic	Estimated average drops of 15-25% in clicks on queries that trigger AI Overviews.	Informational and generalist portals potentially more exposed.
Drop in CTR even at high positions	Part of the answer is already provided in the AI summary, which "steals" clicks from organic results.	Stable rankings but declining traffic on informational queries.
Increase in "zero-clicks"	User gets solution directly in SERP and does not visit external sites.	Phenomenon more pronounced on basic searches and quick queries.
Favoritism toward authoritative sources	AI models tend to cite brands and sites with high established authority.	Emerging sites need to target niches and credibility signals.
Increased measurement complexity	Classic KPIs are not enough: need metrics on visibility/citations in AI summaries.	Integrate analytics with "AI-centric" tracking and tools.
Legal and attribution risks	Use of content in AI summaries without clicks and with attribution not always clear.	Possible regulatory/antitrust developments including at EU and national level.

4. Strategies for surviving and "making your site stand out"

It's not (yet) time to give up: there are approaches and tactics that can help. Here are a number of concrete suggestions:

(a) Structure the content by "machine readability"

Use clear headings (H2, H3) with questions + short answers.
Insert summary blocks (bullet, tables).
Use structured markup (outline, FAQ, Q&A) to help the AI "understand" the content better.
Modular decoupage (portions of the text that are "self-contained units") that the AI can quote as snippets.
Maintain semantic clarity and consistency (keywords, synonyms, context).

(b) Add value that AI cannot synthesize well

Graphs, visualizations, interactive tables, multimedia content.
Original case studies, proprietary data and unique research.
In-depth analyses, comparisons, experiential insights.
Content that requires "reading between the lines" or context, that is not understood in a few sentences.

(c) Strengthens authority and external signals

Getting backlinks from reliable sources (newspapers, authoritative blogs).
Citations ("mentions") from influential sites. Brand consistency and social presence: a "recognized" site has a better chance of being considered trustworthy.
Content with authorial signatures, author biographies, credentials.

(d) Targeting "out of the chorus" queries/vertical niches

Focus on less general, longer, and more specialized queries.
Identify queries with low competition that AI does not cover well.
Differentiate your topic with unique approach, particular angle.

(e) AI-centric monitoring: "visibility in AI Overviews."

Tools that show whether your content is cited in AI summaries (some advanced SEO tools are integrating this feature).
Analyze the queries that trigger AI Overviews in your industry, and see if your content is a candidate.
A/B testing: modify small elements of your content to see if AI "prefers" it (title, structure, keywords).

(f) Traffic diversification

Rely on more than just Google: newsletters, social media, community, direct traffic.
Create "owned" assets (tools, APIs, microsites) that attract users.
User experiences that incentivize return (newsletter, login, member area, exclusive content).

g) Adopt GEO / AEO (Generative Engine Optimization / Answer Engine Optimization)

Optimize by thinking not only about the traditional engine, but how AI models might "respond" to content.(source).
Create clusters of related content, linked queries, strong internal connections.
Work so that AI "sees" your content as part of a coherent information ecosystem.

5. Examples / simulations (Italian / theoretical)

Hypothetical example
Query: "how artificial intelligence works in marketing."

Google could offer an AI Overview summarizing the basic concepts: definition, benefits, risks, trends. Within the summary it could cite sources (e.g., authoritative blogs). If your article has a very clear "What is AI in marketing (definition)" section, AI might pull out that passage. But if your article also has Italian case studies, original data, charts, expert commentary, the interested user will delve deeper by clicking. Actually which is rare anyway.

Comparing "generic" vs. "rich" content

An article that explains in the abstract what AI is can be easily "absorbed" into the summary. Another that includes Italian examples, local experiences, interviews, will not be "compressed" as easily and remains valued.

Local situation

In Italy, spontaneous observations suggest that niche or vertical sites maintain more stable visibility than large generalist portals, which are experiencing a percentage loss of information traffic.

However, in my opinion it is still too early to draw definitive conclusions: AI Overviews have been active for too short a time in Italy and Europe to provide a truly reliable overview. In addition, the demographic and cultural context plays a relevant role: an average older and less tech-savvy population, such as the Italian one, may initially dampen the effects of change. Nevertheless, the real risk is that, following the trajectory already observed in the United States, the decline in traditional web searches in our country as well will become very significant, potentially exceeding 35 percent.

6. Do SEO campaigns still make sense, even in the era of synthetic results?

They certainly do. Although Google is transforming itself - favoring synthetic AI responses, reducing the number of clicks to websites and radically changing organic visibility - SEO campaigns are not becoming obsolete, but evolving. According to Semrush, visitors generated by AI searches tend to be much more valuable than traditional organic traffic due to a higher "quality" of contact.

Similarly, resources such as SEOZoom note that the SERP landscape is changing, but that key traffic metrics and competitive analytics remain useful tools for those who can adapt.

In other words: it's not about abandoning SEO, it's about transforming it, integrating new strategies to appear in AI summaries, consolidate brand authority, and focus on content worth "clicking" on.

7. Conclusion: toward an SEO that coexists with AI

We are entering an era where Google is not only a search engine, but also an answer engine. Content competes not just for ranking, but for being "cited" by AI. The point is not to fight AI, but to figure out how to dialogue with it: to offer value that cannot be reduced to a few sentences, to structure content to be "readable" by machines, to build credibility and authority that AI recognizes.

SEO understood as simply a generator of untargeted visits, obtained by targeting overly generic search keys, can now be considered dead.

And that's not bad news at all: it means having fewer bounce rates due to irrelevant clicks to our content or products. After all, it's never been important how many visits an ecommerce site gets, but how many of them translate into actual conversions.

Where the impact of AI-and Google's AI Overviews in particular-is really heavy, is for those who monetize through low-value informational content: blogs that live off ad space and fill the web with endless articles about trivial tasks, such as "Let's find out how to save a document to PDF." For this kind of content, the days are now numbered, already severely penalized by the growth of social and now definitely challenged by the synthetic responses of artificial intelligence.

It is a different matter for e-commerce and professional activities that use the web to promote their products and services: here the impact will be smaller and will mainly result in a scaling of SEO metrics and statistical data.

In practice, small strategic adjustments will be needed, but not a revolution.

Author: Loris Modena

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SEO in the age of AI: how to survive the era of Google's synthetic results