One site opted out of Google’s AI features to estimate its clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode, plus a possible lift on regular listings.
AI Overviews and AI Mode accounted for about 21% of one site’s Google search clicks, according to an estimate by SEO consultant Cyrus Shepard, who took the site out of Google’s AI features for four weeks. Adding a small lift in regular-listing clicks that he attributes to AI visibility, he puts the share tied to AI features at 23%.
Shepard, founder of Zyppy SEO, excluded Zyppy’s site using Search Console’s Search generative AI control on Sept. 1 and opted back in on Sept. 29, then published the results in his newsletter on Thursday.
He describes it as a single experiment on a single site and wrote that readers should treat the findings “more as a directional yardstick than Google gospel” and not assume the numbers apply to other sites.
In less than an hour, Shepard said Zyppy’s website disappeared from the AI features on Google. Prior to this, the website was receiving anywhere from 500 to 1,000 impressions per day through AI Overviews and AI Mode, which accounted for approximately 10% of all impressions of the site via Google searches.
The help center for Google explains that exclusions generally take several days, and that Google does not consider the exclusion as a ranking or inclusion signal for other parts of its Search function.
He showed an example search where the website remained at number 1 in standard results following the exclusion but didn’t appear in the AI features, not even as a link.
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