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A highly cited report came out earlier this week from BrightEdge. It even had it’s own press release (which should always be a concern for ‘news’ stories).
In fact, rather than raw impression counts, SEOs are now looking at qualitative signals like Google’s “snippet” text-fragment appearing in referral URLs – a sign that a real user clicked through from an AI-laden SERP.
From an SEO perspective, the report’s celebration of a 49% increase in Google search impressions is deeply misleading. Here’s a reframed interpretation from an SEO perspective: that surge in impressions is not a win, it’s a major red flag.
Why should SEOs Be Alarmed by the Impressions Surge?
- More Impressions = Fewer Clicks (HELLO!?)
- Impressions are up nearly 50%, but click-through rates (CTR) are down 30%! That’s not increased visibility – it’s flooded / diluted engagement. SEO efforts are feeding a system where users get answers without ever clicking through to a site.
- Google Keeps the Traffic
- AI Overviews are absorbing intent. They show detailed, often multi-paragraph answers that may satisfy the query on the spot or require users to click again. The user most often will need need to scroll to find the answer or search again. Even top-ranked sites now can rest below the fold, under the massive 1,000+ pixel AI box.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said it best last week:
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- Impressions Are Radically Inflated
- Why are impressions up? Because Google is triggering more AI Overviews for more queries than it did just a few months ago – not because people are looking for more websites, but because they are not finding what they are searching for and getting confused and searching again. That artificially boosts impression counts while making clicks fewer. It represents a deeply unsatisfied searching public.
- Citation Is Very Little Value
- Being cited in an AI Overview might sound good, but it often provides no branding, no click, no value, and no control. Worse yet, Google is citing from pages way deep in the results (positions 30 to 100+), turning content producers into invisible content sources for free. So these are pages that are currently getting no value from Google, yet Google is getting a ton of value from them. How long can this continue before content authors say ‘enough’ already?
- Impressions Are Radically Inflated
- SEO ROI Is Harder to Measure
- Traditional metrics like CTR and position are now meaningless. Getting “seen” in the AI layer means less control, nonexistent referrals, and fuzzier attribution. You’re still doing the work, but Google’s keeping the customer. This can not continue.
TL;DR for SEOs
The 49% surge in impressions is a misleading smokescreen. It actually signals a system where visibility is expanding, but value is shrinking. SEOs are generating the content that feeds Google’s generative layer, but getting fewer and fewer visits in return. Google’s evolving from a quality search engine to an info parasite. It means less traffic, less data, and less control for everyone.
..ps: over the next few months we are going to try to point out how so many of the stats we see in SEO are useless. (There were 3 other “reports” this week that were deeply flawed as well.)
As the CEO and founder of Pubcon Inc., Brett Tabke has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of online marketing and search engine optimization. His journey in the computer industry has spanned over three decades and has made him a pioneering force behind digital evolution. Full Bio
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