Google's AI summaries: Impact on website operators and SEO

I recently had a report created with Gemini Deep Research, which explores how Google Search is changing the SEO world. This is happening through intelligent, automatically generated summaries displayed at the top of the page. As a result, many users likely no longer visit the websites that offer more detailed information.

Impact on website operators

Firstly, it’s of course relevant for website operators to know whether and how they’re even mentioned in these summaries, and which information from their sites is being displayed by Google. However, the bigger problem is that many users no longer visit the websites, resulting in significant traffic loss.

This means that website operators who hope to be found through certain topics and direct visitors to make a booking, for example, no longer reach these potential customers. Page views are dropping dramatically, which is already noticeable, and business is suffering as well.

The challenge for the travel sector

The big question is how to deal with this situation if you’re a website operator, for example in the travel sector. I entered a comprehensive prompt into Google Gemini and received an interesting report. This includes various ideas on how to improve the situation.

The challenge lies in implementing these ideas. It’s relatively easy to create reports, but it’s difficult to derive concrete measures from them and convince people to spend money on them. Motivating staff to drive these changes forward, even with the use of AI, also presents a challenge.

The problem of information overload

The reports are often very long, and someone needs to read them. Yet no one seems to have time for this anymore. We’re generating more and more reports and summaries, but we’re not taking the time to get together as a team and jointly decide which steps we want to take and why.

Only when we all have a clear understanding of what needs to be done can we implement the measures. It’s important to remain steadfast and not immediately chase after each new report with a different approach.