Which industries are most affected by Google's shift to AI search?
Google’s new AI search features - from AI Overviews to AI Mode - are transforming how people find information online. Nearly 60% of searches now end without a click, as answers are served directly in AI results, cutting into the traffic businesses once relied on.
While some consumers remain wary of AI, with 53% saying they distrust AI search results and 41% finding the experience more frustrating than traditional search, these features are already reshaping visibility online.
For brands, the challenge is clear: strategies must be adapted to compete in this new search landscape.
As an agency that specialises in digital PR, Brand PR, and SEO, we work with brands who have had to start adapting their marketing strategies with generative engine optimisation (GEO) - the process of optimising website content so that it’s picked up by AI search - as a result of new types of competition in online search results.
More than a year on from the UK rollout of Google’s AI Overviews, launched on 15 August 2024, and just over a month since the launch of AI Mode on 28 July 2025, we wanted to find out which sectors have seen the biggest impact on their organic traffic and page visibility - a sign that their organic search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies may not be delivering the results they need.
Using the SEO-tool Ahrefs, our researchers analysed average monthly organic traffic and ranking pages in the UK for 800 companies across 16 industries, comparing growth figures from 28 August 2023 to 27 August 2024 with 28 August 2024 to 27 August 25, before and after the introduction of AI search.
Organic traffic refers to the estimated number of monthly visits from organic search. Ranking pages refers to the total number of pages from a domain ranking in the top 100 organic search results. Together, these metrics help to indicate brand visibility in organic search.
Our research shows that in the year before AI search was introduced organic monthly traffic grew across all sectors by 26.3% on average.
In the year after Google launched its AI search features, organic traffic growth slowed significantly, down to just 3.7% on average.
As a whole, it seems that organic traffic is still growing but at a much slower rate than before AI search was introduced - with growth rate down by 22.6 percentage points on average following a year of AI overviews and one-month of AI Mode.
But some sectors saw organic traffic decline over the past year, which previously saw growth, highlighting how AI-driven search features are reshaping visibility and redistributing traffic across industries.
Industries hardest hit by the shift to AI search
The hospitality sector has been the most affected overall, seeing a -6.7% decline in monthly organic traffic over the past year, since the rollout of Google’s AI search features. This is a stark comparison to the year before AI search, where the sector showed the second highest level of organic traffic growth at 47.9% - a total difference of 54.6 percentage points.
The fashion sector showed the second highest decline in organic traffic, experiencing negative growth at -3.4% following the shift to AI search, compared to 33.2% growth the year before.
The travel and tourism sector saw organic traffic drop by -1.6% over the past year, the third largest decline overall, compared to 34.7% growth in the year before AI search.
The finance sector was the fourth most affected. Average monthly organic traffic in the sector dropped by -1.4% since the introduction of AI overviews and AI Mode, compared to 13.1% growth in the year before.
And manufacturing rounds off the top 5 sectors where organic traffic has been most affected by the shift to AI search overall. Organic traffic dropped by -3.8% in 2024/25, compared to 2.5% growth during the previous year.
Industries least affected by the shift to AI search
The data shows that all sectors have seen their organic traffic impacted by the shift to AI search, although some less than others. This could be due to a range of factors, including how quickly brands have adapted GEO into their marketing strategy to improve visibility.
The IT sector appears to be the least affected by the rollout of AI search, with organic traffic growth of 2.1% over the past year, just 0.6% lower than the year before AI search was introduced.
Charity/NFP organisations were the second least affected, with organic traffic growth slowing by 2.5% over the past year, from 15% to 12.5%, before and after the launch of Google’s AI search features.
Organic traffic in the healthcare sector grew by 10% this year, down from 13.6% growth the year prior - a 3.6% slow in growth.
The aviation sector was revealed as the fourth least affected sector, although organic traffic has still slowed by a sixth, from 17% in the year before Google’s AI search features to 1.8% the year after.
Education rounds off the five least affected sectors by the shift to AI search, although organic traffic has also slowed by just over a sixth in the past year.
Difference in ranking pages by sector, before and after Google AI search
The research shows that even brands that were ranking highly before Google launched its AI features are now ranking significantly lower, with just one exception: aviation.
In the year before AI Overviews and AI Mode, all sectors saw growth in their ranking pages, up by 14.1% on average - After Google AI search features, ranking pages declined by -11.1% on average.
Hospitality and fashion businesses saw the fastest growth in ranking pages before AI-search, both up by just over a third year-on-year. However, fashion now stands as the fourth most affected sector for ranking pages, which have declined by -20.6%, and hospitality faces a ranking page decline of -10.3%.
Nearly all sectors analysed in the research have experienced negative growth of ranking pages over the past year, with the most affected sectors revealed as charity/NFP, property and construction, education, fashion, and IT.
Despite experiencing the fifth largest decline in ranking pages after the introduction of Google’s AI rollout, the IT sector saw minimal loss in organic traffic growth. IT-related searches are often complex, technical, and solution-focused, going beyond quick AI summaries and prompting users to click through to the original, authoritative sources - which has likely helped preserve traffic even as rankings dropped.
The charity/NFP sector experienced similar post AI-search visibility patterns, with the highest decline in ranking pages yet minimal loss of traffic. Unlike transactional or informational searches, charity-related queries are often intent-driven, with people looking to donate, volunteer, or verify a cause. This requires trust and emotional connection that AI-search can’t replicate, likely keeping traffic high despite the steep drop in ranking pages.
Aviation was the only sector where ranking pages surged even as traffic fell after Google's AI search rollout. Airlines publish vast, frequently updated pages for routes, fares, promotions, and travel policies, which Google now indexes more broadly to feed AI Overviews and long-tail booking queries. As AI Overviews often reveal flight info, price comparisons, or policy snippets directly on the first page, users may then book through travel aggregators and complete actions without clicking through - resulting in more airline pages ranking, but fewer visits to each site.
The post AI-search visibility patterns in the IT and charity/NFP sectors - with fewer ranking pages yet sustained traffic - signal that search is shifting towards content depth over volume. AI tools are prioritising the most authoritative, intent-matching results, meaning brands must adopt GEO strategies focusing on fewer but higher-quality, trustworthy pieces that AI will feature and users will actively choose.
Martin Harris, head of digital at Tank, said:
“Thanks to the rise of AI-powered search, most consumers are now finding their answers on the first page, without having to click through to a site. It’s great for the user who can now find what they need more quickly, but it could spell trouble for businesses who rely on ranking pages for traffic, clicks and conversions.
“There is a silver lining though: while fewer users are landing on websites overall, those that do are likely to be more interested in your business and product - and therefore, more ready to buy.
“Google AI mode becoming the default search method would mean big changes to future brand visibility and marketing strategy. Adapting is essential to be ready for the future of search, using generative engine optimisation featuring a combination of SEO, PR, content, and social, to help you rank in AI search results.”
How to start ranking in AI search
As AI-generated search results become the norm, businesses need to rethink how they can be discovered online. This means getting mentioned by Google’s AI features themselves.
Jake Cassedy, Tank’s SEO lead, shares his top tips for staying visible in AI-powered search results:
Cover topics comprehensively: AI breaks down user queries into related subtopics to build broader answers. Covering a topic fully and adding unique insights gives you more opportunities to appear and demonstrate EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust).
Answer real user questions: People ask longer and more personalised questions in AI search. Focus on real-life queries and genuine intent, not just individual keywords.
Write for humans, not robots: AI might be summarising your content, but it’s doing so for people. Keep your writing clear, helpful and engaging. Use trustworthy sources or original data to add credibility and make your content more useful.
Get mentioned: Links and brand mentions help influence which sources AI trusts. Strong digital PR and thought leadership can boost your visibility in AI-generated answers.
Get reviewed: Real-world opinions matter. Reviews, forum mentions and user-generated content all play a part in shaping how AI systems perceive your brand and whether they surface it in answers.”
Technical considerations: AI bots don’t reliably render JavaScript, so consider putting your most important content in the raw HTML. Use schema markup to help AI understand your pages, and structure content with headings, bullet points and clear formatting to make it easy to skim, summarise and lift into answers.
Barely two months on from the launch of AI Mode, businesses are already taking note of the impact AI is having on search. Darius Matusiak, group commercial and strategic director at recruitment firm Macildowie, explains, “We’ve noticed a big behavioural shift in the way customers are engaging with us. It’s no longer just about ranking for one or two specific keywords on Google, searches have become far more holistic.
“Customers also increasingly expect us to be across multiple platforms. Visibility, whether on social media, a review site, or an AI-generated snippet, is a priority in the age of AI-powered search but it can’t come at the expense of trust.”
Methodology
Tank used the Ahrefs traffic checker tool to estimate organic web traffic and ranking pages across 16 different UK sectors before and after the UK launch of Google AI overviews (15 August 2024) and AI Mode (28 July 2025). 4,800 data points were collected, then analysed.
Average monthly organic traffic (per year), and average monthly ranking pages (per year) were found for the following dates in each sector - 28 August to 27 August, 3 years in a row from 2022 - 2025.
The percentage difference in growth of organic traffic and ranking pages between years were determined by industry, demonstrating growth before and after AI overviews and AI mode were introduced. These results were then compared and ranked to show the industries most and least affected by the shift to AI search in each area.
Please note that the 28 August 2023 - 27 August 2024 timescale includes 2 weeks of Google AI overviews being introduced, as this was the earliest data available. However, as the data uses average monthly organic traffic for the year, any subsequent changes in this short time period would not affect results. The 28 August 2024 to 27 August 2025 timescale covers one full year of AI overviews and one full month of AI mode.
Data correct as of August 2025.
About AI Mode
AI mode replaces the traditional results format of links with a chat-like interface similar to that of LLMs like ChatGPT.
About AI Overviews
AI Overview is a Google Search feature that provides an AI-generated response to users’ queries by sifting through multiple sources of information and collating this into a single brief summary.