Honestly, here's what I'm watching play out across a heap of accounts: AI Overviews didn't kill everything - it just ate one very specific type of content for breakfast. That thing is the top-of-funnel informational stuff. the "what is X" and "how does Y work" queries. Those get swallowed whole by the summary, the click never happens, and if your traffic game relied on ranking for definitional or explainer keywords, that's where the blood is. Chasing more of it's just burning effort.
Everything else on your list is either holding steady or climbing. high-intent pages are the clearest survivor and that's where I'd put my energy first. bottom-of-funnel, commercial, comparison, product queries - people still click because a summary can't complete a purchase or a trial signup. the "buy", "compare", "best for", "pricing", "integration" style queries still send qualified traffic, and that traffic converts better than it used to, precisely because the AI did the top-of-funnel education first. So the people who do click are further down the path and pre-qualified. Volume dips at the top, intent spikes at the bottom - reallocate accordingly.
Brand search and direct traffic are quietly becoming the metric to watch. they're the one thing AI summaries can't intercept. When someone already knows your name and types it, there's no summary sitting in between. So the real long game is converting all that disappearing informational visibility into brand awareness through other channels. That makes owned audience critical. Email and newsletters are having a genuine resurgence for exactly that reason - a direct line with no algorithm or summary in front. Reddit and community visibility are pulling double duty, driving some direct traffic and heavily feeding AI citations because models weight those sources. YouTube is rising for the same reason - transcripts get pulled and it's its own search engine. AI citations themselves are real but lower volume and higher intent, so treat them as a quality channel, not a traffic firehose.
One caution on your list: topical authority is more important than ever, because both Google and the LLMs reward being the recognised source on a focused area. Depth earns citations. But programmatic SEO is the riskiest play right now. thin programmatic pages built to rank for endless informational variations are exactly the category AI Overviews replaced. mass producing them is often building on sand. programmatic still works when each page serves a genuine high-intent need with real unique data - like actual integration docs or location pages with real local information - but as a volume play for informational keywords, it's mostly dead weight.
The summary: nothing died except thin informational content. shift from top-of-funnel explainers toward high-intent pages, owned audience, and channels that feed both clicks and citations - Reddit, YouTube. Build genuine topical depth rather than programmatic breadth. and start treating brand search as your north star. In a world where summaries answer the generic questions, being the brand people already ask for by name is the one position no AI overview can take from you.
