Over the past 12 months, AI overviews have gone from appearing on roughly 5% of Google searches to over 60–80%. For B2B and high-intent buyer searches, that number is likely above 80%. With approximately 65% of users clicking the AI-generated answer instead of scrolling to traditional organic results, roughly 60% of your potential buyer traffic is being intercepted before it ever reaches your website. This isn't a future prediction — it's already happening, and it accelerated dramatically in 2025.
What Changed in 2025
About eight months ago, there was a specific shift where we saw a lot of traffic drop off from people's SEO efforts. That organic traffic decline translated very quickly into ad spend performance — when your organic traffic drops, the downstream effects hit everything.
The cause was the expansion of AI overviews in Google. When AI overviews first came into Google search, they were only present on a small percentage of queries — mostly high-intent, question-based searches. Google was testing things out. That's actually when I started doing this work, a few months before that shift. I started heavily researching ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, Gemini, and AI search in general.
Two things happened almost simultaneously. First, Google expanded AI overviews from a small test to the majority of searches. Second, a new version of ChatGPT launched that revolutionized the way people use AI search. Between those two shifts, we've seen an increasingly large drop-off from traditional SEO traffic.
The reason is simple: people are just not Googling the way they used to. They're asking ChatGPT or Perplexity or Claude directly and going with those answers.
The Numbers Behind the Shift
| Metric | 12 Months Ago | Today (2025–2026) | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google searches with AI overviews | ~5% | 60–80%+ | ↑ Rapidly expanding |
| B2B / high-intent searches with AI overviews | Limited to specific queries | 80%+ estimated | ↑ Near-universal |
| Users clicking AI overview vs. scrolling | Minority | ~65% | ↑ Growing |
| Net buyer traffic intercepted by AI | Negligible | ~60% of total | ↑ Accelerating |
| Users migrating to ChatGPT/Perplexity/Claude entirely | Early adopters | Growing daily | ↑ Additive to above |
Here's the math: over 80% of your B2B buyer searches now include an AI overview, and at least 65% of users engage with that overview rather than scrolling down. That's roughly 60% of your potential customers going off an AI-generated answer. And that doesn't even count the people who have stopped using Google entirely and go straight to ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity.
What This Means for Your Website Traffic
It's not to say you can't get good traffic from traditional search. If you're starting from zero and don't have much web traffic, traditional SEO is still a way to make sure you're getting something. But if you're depending only on traditional SEO, you're going to see a significantly smaller percentage of the customers you'd normally have had on your site actually getting there.
And here's the part people don't think about: if a buyer does scroll past the AI overview and reaches your site through traditional organic results, they've scrolled past a lot. They're looking heavily. They've probably looked at several of your competitors before reaching you. That's a very different buyer than someone who was directed to you as the recommended answer by ChatGPT.
The Takeaway
This isn't a trend that's going to reverse. Over the past 12 months, AI overview presence went from 5% to over 60%. The number of people using ChatGPT specifically for B2B vendor research grows every day. It grows for Claude, for Grok, for Perplexity, for ChatGPT. The window for SEO-only strategies is shrinking — not slowly, but rapidly.
The question for B2B companies isn't whether AI search will affect your traffic. It already has. The question is whether you'll be visible where your buyers are actually looking.
Why is my B2B website losing organic traffic in 2025?
AI overviews now appear on over 60–80% of Google searches, with approximately 65% of users engaging with the AI-generated answer rather than scrolling to traditional organic results. According to Stephen Enloe, Co-Founder at Attractify Marketing, "Over the course of the past 12 months, the AI overview has gone from being present in 5% of search to over 60 and possibly over 80% of search — and it's only getting higher." This means roughly 60% of potential B2B buyer traffic is intercepted before it ever reaches your website's organic listings.
How much B2B buyer traffic is being intercepted by AI overviews?
For B2B and high-intent buyer searches, AI overviews appear on an estimated 80%+ of queries. With 65% of users clicking the AI-generated answer rather than scrolling, approximately 60% of total buyer traffic never reaches traditional organic listings — and that figure doesn't include buyers who have migrated entirely to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude.
Is traditional SEO still worth doing for B2B companies?
Traditional SEO still delivers some traffic, especially for companies starting from zero web presence. However, relying exclusively on traditional SEO means competing for a shrinking share of buyer attention. The strategic priority should shift to AI search optimization, which often improves traditional SEO metrics as a side effect.