Search visibility is no longer just about rankings. As AI-generated answers replace blue links, brands must think beyond SEO and consider how Large Language Models reference and interpret them.
In recent months, I've been seeing the same thing more and more often in Search Console: impressions are rising sharply, while clicks remain stagnant or drop, and CTRs are plummeting. The first reaction is to look for an update, a penalty, a technical issue, but when you dig deeper, you realize the pages are still there, the queries are holding up, and visibility hasn't disappeared. The way people consume the response has changed.
This isn't a bug, and it's not necessarily a ranking issue. It's the effect of generation.
"AI Overviews and increasingly response-oriented interfaces are intercepting part of the informational intent before the user feels the need to click."
You contribute to the response, but you don't always intercept the visit. Essentially, we're living in a phase where being shown no longer automatically equates to being chosen.
For years, we've thought in terms of position; now there's a layer above position that works by synthesis, interpretation, and entity association. The question isn't just whether the page ranks, but whether the brand is considered part of the response when the system generates an output.
If impressions are growing and clicks are declining, perhaps you're not losing ground; you're entering a different phase of the game. The real variable isn't just the SERP, it's the presence within the generated response. Ranking and influence are no longer the same thing, and continuing to interpret everything using yesterday's metrics risks making us lose track of what's happening today.
