Every few years, marketing headlines announce the demise of one foundational strategy or another. First, email, then blogging, then search engines. Now, with the rise of AI comes the question, “Is AI killing web traffic?” But the curiosity is actually warranted. As of December 2025, AI Overviews chop organic click-through rate (CTR) for position-one content by an average of 58% , and that’s no coincidence. We’re in the middle of a huge shift in how search engines surface information, and it’s rewriting the rules for marketers and content teams across every industry. First, Google’s AI Overviews are answering queries directly on the results page, intercepting searches that previously drove clicks to websites. And second, a growing portion of searchers are skipping Google entirely and turning to answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity for answers. Both trends slice the traffic search engines send to sites, but it’s not gone entirely.…