← LibraryCase No. 16
High stakesYour own employer (reference content publisher) · In-house SEO budget defense

AI Search Just Ate Half Our Traffic

Google AI Overviews launched in your category. Your organic traffic dropped 38%.

Based on real client experiences, but anonymized and dramatized to protect identities and confidential relationships.

The setup

You're Head of SEO at a reference publisher. Your CEO emails the marketing leadership Slack: "Our traffic is in freefall — AI Overviews are answering queries we used to rank #1 for. The board is asking what we're doing about it. I need a plan by Friday."

The three data points
  1. 01Organic traffic down roughly a third in 90 days
  2. 02Affected queries skew informational (exactly where Overviews dominate)
  3. 03Your AI visibility is low — citations exist, but they're going to the wrong pages
How you pitch

3 minutes to position AI visibility as the answer, not another budget ask in a crisis. Read the room — your CEO is panicked, not curious.

What makes it exciting

Existential moment for the company and your function. You can either be the calm voice that points the way, or another team asking for headcount during a fire.