AI Search Is Cutting Website Traffic for Australian Brands That Have Not Adapted Their SEO Strategy
UNTMD
- AI-generated summaries in search engines are increasingly answering user queries before any clicks occur, with 60% of all Google searches now ending without a single click to a website, rising to 77% on mobile.
- Click-through rates drop by up to 34.5% when a Google AI Overview appears, and 25.11% of all Google searches triggered an AI Overview in Q1 2026, up from just 6.49% in mid-2024.
- The overlap between top-10 organic rankings and AI Overview citations collapsed from 75% in mid-2025 to between 17% and 38% by early 2026, meaning a page ranked first can be entirely absent from the AI summary shown above it.
- Brands are largely measuring search performance using ranking positions, which no longer reflects whether content is actually reaching users through the AI layer.
- South Melbourne agency UNTMD advises that the solution is to identify which queries are being intercepted by AI Overviews and restructure content to be cited within them, rather than simply optimising for traditional rankings.
SOUTH MELBOURNE, Australia — 06 October 2026 — UNTMD, a South Melbourne digital marketing agency, says the traffic declines Australian brands are attributing to algorithm changes or seasonal dips are, in most cases, driven by a structural shift in how search engines now handle queries: AI-generated summaries are answering questions before users click anything.
The data is clear and worsening. CTR drops up to 34.5% when a Google AI Overview appears on a query, according to a 2025 Ahrefs study based on 300,000 keywords. In Q1 2026, 25.11% of all Google searches triggered an AI Overview, up from 6.49% in mid-2024. Separately, 60% of all Google searches now end without a single click to any website. On mobile, that figure reaches 77%. The brands most exposed are those with content-heavy sites built around informational queries, where AI Overviews are most likely to appear and least likely to send traffic through.
The compounding problem is that ranking well no longer guarantees being cited inside the AI layer. The overlap between top-10 organic rankings and AI Overview citations collapsed from 75% in mid-2025 to between 17% and 38% by early 2026, meaning a page sitting at position one on a query can be completely absent from the AI summary that appears above it. Most brands are still measuring organic performance by ranking position, which no longer captures whether they are actually reaching the user.
"The brands coming to us with traffic declines are almost always measuring the wrong thing. Rankings look fine because the page still sits at position one. What has changed is that the AI Overview above it is answering the question, and the user never scrolls down. The fix is not a content refresh. It is understanding which queries the AI layer is intercepting and restructuring content to be cited rather than just ranked," said Maria Kathopoulis, founder of UNTMD.
UNTMD's SEO and AI search work covers both conventional ranking optimisation and the citation signals that determine whether a brand appears inside AI Overviews, including entity authority, structured content, and answer-layer formatting. The agency manages search strategy for clients across construction, solar, education, health, and direct-to-consumer retail, and publishes quarterly benchmark data drawn from more than $147,000 of managed advertising spend across 20 accounts.
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UNTMD is an Australian digital marketing agency providing integrated strategy, SEO, paid media, content, social media, PR, email, and brand services to growth-stage founders and scaling brands. The agency is based in South Melbourne and led by Maria Kathopoulis.
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