Reading Search Data When AI Overviews Answer the Question First
A defense lawyer opens Search Console and sees something that looks like bad news. Impressions on the firm's question pages are up compared with last year. Clicks are flat or down. The pages that answer "can a DUI be dismissed" or "how long does a misdemeanor stay on your record" are being seen more and visited less.
That pattern has become common since Google started placing AI Overviews and AI Mode answers above many informational results. It does not automatically mean the content is failing. It means the numbers need to be read differently, with more attention to which searches matter for intake and less to raw traffic. Here is a practical way to do that.
Know what the reports count
Google has said that clicks, impressions and positions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted inside the normal Web search totals in the Performance report. For most of the past year there was no way to split them out. Google has since been rolling out separate generative AI performance reporting in Search Console, and availability has varied by property, so check whether yours shows it before assuming you can isolate AI traffic.
Either way, the plain Performance report blends two kinds of visibility. Some impressions come from a link appearing inside an AI answer. Others come from a regular result further down the page. A rise in impressions with a fall in CTR is what you would expect when more of your appearances happen in places people read without clicking.
Split question searches from hiring searches
The fastest way to make sense of the data is to group queries by intent. Export the Queries list for the last three months and tag each row.
- Question searches: penalties, timelines, record sealing, what happens at arraignment.
- Hiring searches: a charge plus lawyer, attorney or defense, often with a city.
- Name searches: the firm or a lawyer by name.
- Everything else.
Then compare each group with the same period a year earlier. On many defense sites, question searches show the clearest drop in CTR because those are the searches most likely to trigger an AI answer. Hiring searches with a city name tend to be dominated by the map pack and local results, so they often behave differently. If your hiring and name searches are steady, the business side may be in better shape than the headline numbers suggest.
Look at what happens after the click
Fewer clicks can still mean more useful visits. A person who reads an AI summary of DUI penalties and then clicks through to your page has already absorbed the basics. They may be further along in deciding whether to call.
Check analytics for the visits that do arrive on question pages. Useful signals include:
- Calls or form submissions that start on a question page.
- Visits that move from a question page to a charge page or contact page.
- Time spent on the page compared with the same page a year ago.
If clicks fell and these numbers held or improved, the page is still doing its job. If both fell, the page may need to answer something the AI summary cannot, such as how a local court handles the issue or what the first week after an arrest looks like in your county.
Watch referrals from AI tools as a separate line
Traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and similar tools usually shows up in analytics as referral traffic from their domains, though some of it arrives with no referrer at all and lands in direct. Set up a saved report or channel group that collects the known AI referrers so the trend is visible month to month. This guide to measuring AI crawler visits and AI referrals on a law firm site covers the setup in more technical detail.
The volume will probably be small next to Google. That is fine. The point is to see whether it grows and which pages people land on, since those are the pages AI tools seem to cite.
Decide what to change, if anything
Once the data is grouped, the next step is usually one of three things, and sometimes none.
A question page with falling clicks and steady conversions can be left alone. A question page with falling clicks and falling conversions probably needs local detail and a clearer route to a consultation. A hiring page with falling clicks is a more serious signal and deserves a closer look at rankings, the map pack and competitors before you blame AI answers.
Keep a short log of changes with dates. Without one, it becomes impossible to tell later whether a shift came from your edits or from a change in how Google displays results.
For more on reading and acting on search numbers, see these guides to legal marketing analytics and search data.
Questions about search data and AI answers
Should I stop writing question pages because AI answers them?
Not necessarily. Question pages are often the source material AI answers draw on, and they still bring in visitors who want more than a summary. The goal shifts toward pages that add local and practical detail.
Can I see exactly which AI Overviews cite my site?
Search Console does not give a full list of citations. Some third-party tools sample AI answers for chosen queries, but treat their results as estimates.
Is a drop in clicks a ranking problem?
Sometimes, but check position first. If average position held steady while clicks fell, the change is more likely in how results are displayed than in your rankings.
SBD Marketing works only with criminal defense firms. It helps them with website design, SEO for the charges they defend, visibility in AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini, and SEO audits.