In this edition of Ask An SEO, we’re addressing a question about the impact of AI Overviews on search engine results pages, particularly for ecommerce store owners looking to stay competitive:
“Do you think that AI Overviews or AI will disrupt SERPs with Google PLAs? And, as someone with a small ecommerce store selling clothing, what can I do to keep ahead with the introduction of gen AI apps?”
That’s a great question! It’s an issue many ecommerce site owners have been grappling with since AI Overviews started rolling out last May.
The big concern is that Google’s generative AI summaries – which appear right at the top of the SERPs – will eat into your traffic.
If people can get answers to their questions without visiting your website, this could lead to a steep decline in customers.
However, while this new trend might at first seem worrying, I don’t think the level of disruption will be as big as it first appears, particularly for ecommerce stores. AI Overviews might also present opportunities to climb up the rankings, too.
Do note that the picture is a bit less clear with the likes of ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot – these apps don’t yet provide links to sources in their answers, but they also aren’t used for search anywhere near as much as Google.
Will AI Disrupt SERPs With Google PLAs?
Generative AI is clearly one of the most disruptive technologies to emerge in years, and there are almost daily breakthroughs.
So, I’ve tried to answer the questions raised, but there’s obviously a big caveat: Things are changing fast, and we can’t make any predictions with certainty.
But to respond to the first part of the question about whether AI will disrupt SERPs, my instinct would be: “Not that much (probably!).”
First things first, research from BrightEdge (as reported in Search Engine Journal in November) found that AI Overviews are becoming more stable and aligning more closely with organic search results.
The citation links that appear alongside AI Overviews increasingly show links to websites that also appear in the top 10 results.
For example, if you were searching [how long to bake a loaf of bread], AI Overviews would typically synthesize answers from baking websites that already appear on page one.
As well as listing the websites in the SERP, AI Overviews will provide links to those pages in the “citation” area, too.
What does this mean? Essentially, Google continues to reward sites that produce high-quality, relevant, and reliable content.
The appearance of AI Overviews at the top of the page has altered the look and feel of the search experience. But since Google still provides links to relevant pages in its answers, the underlying principles of ranking haven’t actually changed.
The effect of AI Overviews on Product Listing Ads (PLAs) was also asked. For the first few months after AI Overviews came out, this was a bit unclear. However, as of last October, we now have a better idea of how it’ll work.
Google announced it would begin injecting ads into AI Overviews (typically as a carousel below the text). At the time of writing, this doesn’t seem to have been fully rolled out.
But the example Google gave was of a searcher asking, [how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?]. Below the AI Overview, a carousel shows a number of related grass stain removal products.
Screenshot from blog.google, February 2025
Screenshot from blog.google, February 2025If you pay for PLAs, then it’s likely that they will start to appear in these kinds of responses.
AI Overviews Aren’t ‘Competing’ With Ecommerce Stores
The inquirer also mentioned they run a small ecommerce store selling clothing. They may well be concerned about what AI Overviews mean for their existing ads and product pages.
Well, research from Ahrefs suggests the kind of content they likely have on their website probably isn’t competing with AI Overviews.
Ahrefs studied hundreds of thousands of searches that produced an AI Overview.
The vast majority of searches that returned an overview were informational searches (who, where, when, why, etc.) – less than 6% were commercial in nature, and less than 5% were transactional.
This suggests that a limited proportion of search intent that gets answered by AI Overviews is related to the kinds of things sold on the site.
Basically, AI Overviews answers longer tail questions like [how to style a bucket hat].
But if someone just searches [bucket hat], they’ll be shown PLAs and organic SERP results – not a generative AI response.
AI Overviews Could Help You Leapfrog Competitors
As I mentioned above, AI Overviews provide citation links to websites that also rank in the top 10 organic results.
However, an analysis from Surfer SEO suggests this only happens 52% of the time. For the other 48% of sources, websites further down the rankings (some of which may be quite obscure) can get a link right at the top of the SERPs if their content helps inform Google’s AI.
This means that, even if your website doesn’t currently rank on page one, you could still get page one levels of traffic if your content is referred to by Google.
What Can You Do To Stay Ahead As AI Becomes More Widespread?
With the same caveats mentioned above regarding the pace of change in this field, I think there are a handful of things you can do to keep getting traffic to an ecommerce store.
My first tip is simply to keep following the best practices. Sorry, I know it’s not very exciting! But the fact is, creating useful, original, accurate, and reliable content – in line with Google’s Helpful Content Update – is still the way to go.
Given that over half of the sources cited in AI Overviews also appear organically in the top 10 results of SERPs, this tells us that producing quality content remains the best way of ranking.
I’m guessing the inquirer has a fashion niche. If so, providing personalized styling ideas, seasonal fashion tips, guides to choosing the right hat/jacket/dress/jeans, etc., will all help increase the chances of winning traffic.
Another unexciting (but still reliable) tip is to follow good ecommerce “hygiene.”
Keep the product schema up to date and accurate, and provide detailed attribute tables that tell Google and other search engines what the site is about. I know, it’s hardly groundbreaking stuff. But it will help feed the algorithm and make the website more likely to appear in searches.
For product detail pages (PDPs), I’d also recommend focusing on unique product descriptions (like highlighting things about the design, the fabric, or how to style it). These are things that AI can’t figure out yet, and which the competitors may not have written about.
On that note, I’d also strongly recommend human curation when writing content.
As impressive as ChatGPT and others are, they can only regurgitate information that already exists.
To describe new products, features, or styles, you need a human to do it. Of course, generative AI can certainly help get the ball rolling if you’re staring at a blank page, but it needs your expert touch, too.
I hope this helped. Clearly, search is going through a period of massive change.
But ultimately, by following the best practices and focusing on quality, helpful content, you’ll continue to give yourself the best chances of attracting traffic and converting customers.
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Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
