Sean Walsh
Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.
New research shows AI Overview rankings shift more frequently than traditional organic search, with major implications for SEO.
A new study by Authoritas, has revealed that Google’s AI Overviews are significantly more volatile than organic search rankings. Over a two to three-month period, 70% of the pages ranking in AI Overviews changed—a much higher turnover than in traditional search results.
While Google’s organic rankings are known for their fluctuations, AI Overview rankings appear to be even more unstable.
Why this matters for SEO
The volatility of AI Overviews means businesses must take a more dynamic approach to SEO:
- Tracking AI Overview rankings separately from organic rankings is essential to understanding visibility trends.
- Changes in AI Overview snippets may signal shifts in user intent, making content updates crucial for maintaining rankings.
- SEO strategies should include AI Overview-specific optimisations, such as monitoring snippet changes and aligning content with AI-generated responses.
Key volatility findings:
- AI Overviews ranking volatility score: 0.68 (8 weeks), 0.73 (13 weeks)
- Google organic ranking volatility score: 0.49 (8 weeks), 0.55 (13 weeks)
- AI Overview text snippets also changed frequently, with volatility scores of 0.18 (8 weeks) and 0.21 (13 weeks).
This suggests that ranking in AI Overviews is far less predictable than organic search, posing new challenges for SEO strategies.
AI Overviews vs. organic rankings: Different systems, different results
The study also found that AI Overviews and organic rankings operate independently of each other:
- 60% of the time, AI Overviews include pages that already rank in the top 10 of Google search.
- 40% of the time, AI Overviews rank pages that don’t appear in the top 10 at all.
- The AI Overview text snippet can change over time, even if some of the cited sources remain the same.
Additionally, the study found little correlation between AI Overview volatility and organic ranking volatility. This means that a change in AI Overview results does not necessarily indicate an organic ranking shift, reinforcing the need to monitor AI Overviews separately.
About the study
The report analysed Google search results for 11,203 keywords across three different dates: August 2024, October 2024, and January 2025. It measured volatility across SERP layouts, organic rankings, AI Overview rankings, and AI-generated text snippets to determine how frequently search results changed over time.
With AI Overviews playing an increasingly important role in search, understanding their ranking behaviour will be key for future SEO success.
