How NOT to lose traffic to AI Overviews: 5 Things you MUST do today to protect your ranking

Overview

If you’ve noticed a dip in your traffic lately, you're not alone. Google’s AI Overviews have reshaped the search results landscape, pushing down traditional organic links and pulling up AI-generated answers. But here’s the good news: with the right strategy, you can regain visibility and even get featured directly in those AI Overviews. This post walks you through five essential actions you must take now to protect your rankings and future-proof your SEO efforts.

In this post, you’ll learn:

• What is your secret weapon for staying visible
• How content structure influences AI citations
• Why freshness is everything in the age of AI
• How to create buzz that Google (and AI) can’t ignore
• What tools to use to track, adapt, and thrive

The AI Overview traffic shock

You wake up. Check your analytics. And traffic is down, again! But the SERPs haven’t changed that much... or so you think.

Since Google rolled out AI Overviews (AIO) to a wider audience in 2024, the SEO game has shifted. According to Semrush, AI Overviews appeared in over 13% of U.S. desktop queries as of March 2025, more than double what we saw in January. That means AI is no longer a side dish. It’s the main course.

And here's the punch: if your content isn't structured right or considered "fresh" and trustworthy, it simply gets pushed aside. Traffic drops, conversions slow, and you’re left wondering what went wrong.

But there is a solution. You just need to adjust your playbook. Here are 5 MUST things you need to do, to stay on top of the game and get traffic back to your website.

1. Reviews are your secret weapon for freshness and credibility.

Let’s start with the most underused, high-impact lever in your SEO arsenal: customer reviews. AI overviews love structured, authoritative and fresh content. They are designed to pull in the most relevant, up-to-date, and credible content. Reviews check all those boxes:

• They’re fresh content, updated continuously
• They signal real user trust and experience
• They contribute structured, keyword-rich text naturally

What you need to do:

• Add review schema and highlight customer testimonials
• Prompt immediate feedback after purchase. That means you reply to every review.
• Showcase reviews prominently on at least landing pages and service pages.

When reviews are displayed on your site using tools like Tickiwi, and marked up with proper schema, they become a goldmine for AI models hungry for authoritative, community-driven data.

Pro tip: Additionally to reviews on landing pages and product or services pages, add them also on FAQs or even blog posts. Every review you collect is a signal to Google: We’re current. We deliver. We’re valuable. And that’s how you get cited.

2. Present Content the AI Way

Forget writing walls of text or placing your magic keywords everywhere... AI Overviews prefer structure. Think: headlines, subheadings, direct answers.

To win in this new landscape, your content must be:

• Clear and concise, written in a conversational tone that answers questions
• Rich in headings and bullet points, the more the better
• Built with FAQs or question-answer formats (think what people would ask for and answer that)
• Enhanced with structured data (especially FAQ schema)

What you need to do:

• Use H2/H3 headings with keyword-rich questions
• Provide clear and concise answers
• Make a FAQ schema or “Conversation-style” Q&A sections

This isn’t just a best practice anymore. It’s a requirement if you want to be cited in AI-generated summaries. Semrush found that AI Overviews tend to pull from sites that offer quick, scannable answers rather than long-winded prose.

So, when you write content, write it for your user... but format it for the AI. Like we’re doing with this post.

3. Keep It Fresh - Let your customers to do the work

Google loves freshness. What we want to say, Google LOVES reviews. AI Overviews demand it.

When a user searches for something, AI wants to serve results that are not just correct, but current. And the easiest way to make your site fresh without rewriting everything constantly?

Reviews.

Each new review you collect:

• Updates your page content dynamically
• Adds natural language users actually search for
• Shows Google that your business is alive and kicking

If you want to do more work, feel free to do these:

• Revamp old posts: new stats, new insights, new testimonials
• Publish seasonal or trend-based content tied to your product/service.

But... don’t just rely on publishing new blog posts. You need to get reviews in. Automate the collection of reviews after every customer interaction. Tools like Tickiwi make that effortless. And bonus: it’s not just for AI, customers love seeing recent reviews before they buy.

4. Create Buzz That Google (and AI) Can’t Ignore

Ever notice how AI Overviews often reference Reddit, Quora, and niche forums? That’s because these platforms reflect genuine conversations and community trust.

So how do you make your brand a part of that conversation?

• Get your products or services mentioned on forums and blogs
• Share expert takes in your niche that others can cite
• Encourage happy customers to talk about you online

When people talk about your brand, Google listens. And when Google listens, AI Overviews follow.

As NP Digital often highlights, the more credible brand mentions you have across the web, the more likely your domain becomes a trusted source that gets surfaced in summaries. Credibility isn’t just about backlinks anymore. It’s about presence.

What you need to do:

• Create a profile on all social media you can
• Subscribe to a review platform, like Tickiwi to collect reviews

5. Track. Adapt. Win.

You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Thankfully, both Ahrefs and Semrush now offer AI-specific tracking tools to monitor your presence in AI Overviews.

Here’s how to stay ahead:

• Use Semrush’s AI Toolkit to check which keywords trigger AI Overviews
• Use Ahrefs’ AI References to monitor where your site is cited
• Compare which of your competitors are getting featured, and reverse-engineer their structure

Once you know what works, scale it.

This is where most businesses stop short. But if you double down on what earns citations, optimize underperforming pages, and push reviews site-wide, you’ll start winning back visibility, with momentum.

Don’t Just Adapt. Dominate.

AI Overviews changed the game. But like every change in search, this is an opportunity in disguise.

You now know:

• How reviews feed the freshness loop
• Why structure beats style
• That visibility today depends on trust, citations, and format

So the question is: will you sit back and hope traffic returns, or will you take action to claim your spot in AI Overviews?

Tickiwi helps you stay visible by turning every customer into a fresh content source. We help you collect reviews, add the right schema, and turn your site into an authority AI Overviews want to quote.