Youtube the Biggest Benefactor of AI Overview Traffic?

March 7th, 2025

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One thing I wanted to add: I’m always on the lookout for interesting things to write about, so if you see a 🔥 Twitter convo, or a great article (esp. from one of the not-obvious-publications-that-everyone-already-knows-about), please send it my way. I’m starving for interesting SEO shit.

A WORD FROM CONTENTBRIEFS.COM

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AI Overviews

Surprise! Google Loves to Send AI Overview Traffic To Its Own Properties

OMG sean why do you keep writing about Google search + AI, you’re like some SEO guy constantly writing about Google search + EAT in late summer 2018 (aka The Medic update).

Yeah. Because if you were a website watching all these huge sites’s traffic graphs get reduced to dust, you were hungry to consume every piece of news about it to figure out how it might affect your site.

Now, in this year of steady AI eating the world, you need to be on top of all these AI updates so you can skate to where the puck is headed, instead of buying a hot dog from the skating ring concession stand and walking awkwardly on the carpet with your skate blades while you drip chili all over your shirt…

The Quick Summary:

According to a new study, Google is sending more and more of its AI Overview traffic straight to Youtube.

The Main Thing:

OF COURSE they are, he said, repeatedly asserting for at least 5 years now that Google is salty about making companies that aren’t Google rich off Google traffic.

So they’re sending more traffic back to Youtube than other properties. From SEJ’s write-up of the BrightEdge Article:

My Take:

If this isn’t something that expands to ALL niches over the next year or two I’ll be shocked, shocked right down to my core beliefs about who Google is as a company and what they care about.

What does this mean for YOU?

Get your shit on Youtube, obviously.

Not yet, but eventually you’re gonna need to squeeze every drop from the SERPs that you can, and having a channel that Google’s AI pushes people to for queries in your niche so it can engage them and sell Youtube ads is how you appease the beast of the future.

If you have products, teach things, or deal with YMYL topics I’d say get your ass on Youtube now if you’re not, yet.

You know what they say: the best time to start a Youtube channel was 10 years ago. The second best time start a Youtube channel was 9 years, 364 days ago. The THIRD best time…

~

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Markey, out.