Well this is FASCINATING!

I noticed point number 2 and was wondering about proximity to the AIO because I have a client that has a few AIO inclusions and there was an uptick as well in GSC click Data and they are sitting 4-8. Position 4 with AIO seems to be the new organic position 2.

Yeah, it’s really interesting. How it seems to be affecting search behavior.

Part of me was wondering if a lot of users want to scroll to the organic results and accidentally scroll past positions 1-3 if they’re sandwiched between ads, AIOs, and PAAs

@jsickler seems to follow the same psychology of being sandwiched between ads and featured snippets. It will adapt though I assume it's because searchers are using old cognitive patterns for search bias applied to a new format.

Very very interesting. The idea that being in position 4-10 for informational queries is actually better for sites is very interesting. Wonder how SEO's will adjust strategy to try and rank well, but not too well ????. It'll also be interesting to see if this behavioral pattern lasts as people accept that AIO's are here to stay.

I'm trying to reconcile how much I believe in the GSC to SERP comparisons. It's very possible that AI Overviews are showing for some % of searchers that doesn't match the output they got from SERP API. That's the hardest part for any of these types of studies

Referencing #1 in your post:

This is a direct quote from Sundar Pinchai in Google’s 2024 Q4 earnings call a few weeks ago:

“People use Search more with AI Overviews and usage growth increases over time as people learn that they can ask new types of questions. This behavior is even more pronounced with younger users, who really appreciate the speed and efficiency of this new format. As AI continues to expand the universe of queries that people can ask, 2025 is going to be one of the biggest years for Search innovation yet.”

we've seen SERPs with 10-20 AI Overviews, once you click through all the PAA, things to know, etc. It's taking over faster than most people realize

This is all excellent quantitative data. My next questions will be qualitative.

1. Do consumers trust AIOs?

2. Why do consumers click AIOs?

• To verify accuracy?

• To learn more/take action?

We’re just starting a qualitative survey to get those answers and more.

It’s critical to know how AIOs will change consumer search behavior and how they will impact brand affinity and performance marketing as a result.

@derek that’s an excellent point. I’m always concerned about false assumptions when pulling data at scale.

I know our team has been carefully evaluating a variety of tools accuracy at pulling SERP features—including AIO data.

I’ll follow up with our data scientist who runs our AIO studies to find out how he controlled for AIO variability/accuracy

Amazing, points 2 and 3 are super interesting and I am going to def digest the findings with my clients in mind (also commenting so I get notified of more replies, this is a great conversation).

@derek, here's what our data scientist said in regards to your question:

> "Derek is correct that the hardest part is essentially establishing a source of truth, specifically a set of SERPs where we know that AIOs appear/don't appear. Pragmatically this is impossible, given that different users may be subject to different AIOs. But, we did manually check all of the SERPs used in this analysis for potential false negatives. As in, we checked to see if SERP API reported "no AIO" when IRL there was indeed an AIO on SERP. I think within reason, this is the best we can do.