Read the AI Overview stealing case study here.
AI Overviews were crowding out organic brand visibility
Centriq, a long-established training and solutions provider of over 30 years, delivers hands-on accelerated IT career training, corporate IT training, and custom AI solutions.
They had been losing some brand visibility due to Google’s “AI Overviews” dominating high-funnel, informational queries. If you weren’t cited in the Overview, you weren’t being seen. Learn more about AI Overviews and GEO here.
Centriq’s blog-content was still relevant and ranking fine, but the structure of search results changed, the AI Overview box at the top of search results pages meant that unless they were included there, clicks, impressions and brand exposure were being lost.
Strategic updates to existing content
Rather than creating large volumes of entirely new content, the emfluence team reviewed all of Centriq’s blog posts and identified three articles that had the strongest potential to capture AI Overview citations.
They then audited those posts – reviewed target keywords, looked at which pages were already cited in AI Overviews for those keywords, and reviewed those posts.
After the research and review, they updated the blog posts’ headings, copy, metadata, schema markup, page structure, and published date. No new content was required; instead they optimized what was already there.
Strong visibility & traffic gains
The goal of these updates was to get cited in the AI Overviews which will drive more organic visibility of the brand.
The impact of this focused optimization was significant:
- A 300% increase in AI Overview citations for the keywords tracked. (From being cited in 4 overviews to 16 after the updates.)
- A 33% increase in organic brand impressions, meaning more users saw the Centriq brand in search results.
- A 20% increase in organic entries to those posts.
- A 100% increase in organic form completions on the updated posts, though the baseline was low, any conversions directly from higher-funnel content is a bonus.
What this means for your content strategy
Don’t assume your content is visible just because it’s published. Search result formats are constantly changing – AI Overviews, more real estate for ads, zero-click results, etc. If you’re not in those boxes, you could be missing visibility.
Optimizing your existing content can be greater than constant creation, sometimes. Rather than creating entirely new pieces, auditing and tweaking existing high-potential posts can pay big dividends, especially when search formats shift.
Headings, schema, metadata, page structure, and published dates matter. These help crawlers understand your content, trust that it is the most recent and reliable information, and decide whether to cite you in an AI Overview.
Brand visibility can precede direct conversion. With top-of-funnel informational queries, the goal may first be exposure, not immediate sales. But exposure can lead to conversion over time.
If you’re producing informational content, it’s worth asking: Is our brand appearing in AI Overviews and zero-click results? If not, the fix might be less about new content and more about smarter optimization.
This can be replicated for anyone with informational content, like a blog. If you’re interested in seeing what is possible for you, contact us here.
