Navigating the “Funkiness”: SEO in the Age of AI Overviews and AI Mode

Article key points

• Organic search traffic in 2025 shows a “funkiness” with increased impressions but stagnant or declining clicks, a trend dubbed the “alligator chart.”
• This divergence began in Fall 2024 with Google’s AI Overviews and intensified with AI Mode in May 2025.
• Google’s removal of the num=100 search parameter also contributed to increased noise and a higher impression-to-click ratio.
• These changes make historical data comparisons difficult, shifting focus to conversion tracking for performance measurement.
• For those without advanced conversion tracking, traditional SEO tactics like consistent upkeep, optimization, and well-structured content remain vital.
• Continuous monitoring of the evolving SEO landscape is recommended.

If you’ve dipped into your Search Console data in the past, oh, I don’t know, eight months, you know there’s some funkiness going on with organic search and time-tested SEO strategies don’t seem to be working. When comparing recent organic traffic with previous periods, that funkiness becomes more apparent. 

More Impressions, Fewer Clicks

Over the course of 2025, I noticed impressions were increasing big time, but clicks were not keeping pace. In some cases, clicks were declining while impressions were skyrocketing. I did plenty of digging inside Search Console into query data, impressions and clicks, errors, rankings and on and on and while I could see something was happening, I still didn’t have a concrete reason as to what was causing it.

Zero Click Search Results

I knew search engines were starting to provide more answers directly on the results page, leading to the zero-click search phenomenon, but it still felt speculative, and it wasn’t obvious in our partners’ traffic. It seemed we were pointing to negative evidence (declining clicks) to back it up. After reviewing search console trends in July for one of our partners, the divergence was clear. Impressions and Average position were rising while Clicks and Click-through rates (CTR) were dropping. 

As a result, I did some research online and found Barry Schwartz’s video in early September about organic traffic dropping. What I found was that this trend was occurring not just with our partner, but across the web. The trend I was seeing in Search Console was referred to as the “alligator chart” (bonus points if you can guess why!). 

In the chart above, you can see the divergence really begins in the Fall of 2024, which follows on the heels of Google’s official launch of AI Overviews in August 2024. 

But then, in May 2025, Google rolled out AI Mode in search and we see things really start to diverge. 

But Wait, There’s More Organic Search Traffic Funk

Part of the divergence has been attributed to Google getting rid of the num=100 search parameter that bots (SEO tools, AI bots, scraper bots, etc.) use to pull the 100 top organic search results. With the rise of AI search and AI platforms (as well as the SEO platforms trying to keep pace), these bots created a ton of noise in organic search (see the alligator chart). With that came an increase in impressions and the proportion of impressions to clicks increased significantly. This was part of Google’s latest anti-spam update (which is another blog post altogether).

This update, especially the removal of the num=100 parameter, has wreaked havoc on organic search, exploding Search Console graphs since early September. To complicate matters, the effect hasn’t been the same for all websites. Check out this sampling:

What Do We Do Now? Or, Look To Conversions For The Truth

Perhaps the biggest drawback to all this is that it makes meaningful comparisons of current data to historical data very difficult, which in turn makes preparing for what’s next a guessing game at best.

To that end, we’ve been focusing on conversion tracking to gauge how our websites are actually performing, as it’s the best indicator in all this noise of whether what we’re doing is working.

If you don’t have conversion tracking set up beyond the basic events that come right out of the box in GA4, it’s a good idea to fall back on tried and tested SEO tactics that help for organic search and AI search results. It’s boring, but it’s the truth. Constant upkeep and optimization will always be your friend, especially where article summaries, lists and solid, logical structure are concerned.

In the meantime, keep an eye on the SEO space for updates. Things may look very different a few days, a week or a month from now.