Since 26 March 2025, Google's AI Overviews have been running in Belgium. Seventeen months on, several studies converge on the same point: the drop in organic clicks is real, measurable, and it doesn't hit every site the same way. Here's what matters for your SEO now.
17 months of exposure, and an already-measured effect
On 26 March 2025, Google expanded its AI-generated summaries to nine European countries, including Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Italy. France, by contrast, stayed outside the rollout until 22 July 2026, for regulatory reasons. In practice, a Belgian SME has been exposed to AI Overviews for a year and a half, well ahead of its French neighbours. Arcom, the French audiovisual regulator, estimates traffic loss attributable to AI summaries at between 33% and 38% on European markets where the feature is already active, and Belgium is one of them. A randomized experiment run in 2026 with 1,065 Chrome desktop users measured a 39.8% drop in outbound organic clicks when an AI Overview appears, and a 34.5% rise in zero-click searches.
A mechanism already documented in Germany
In Germany, the tool SISTRIX analysed more than 100 million keywords: when an AI Overview appears, on roughly 20% of searches, the click-through rate of the top organic position falls from 27% to 11%, an estimated loss of 265 million organic clicks per month across the market. Globally, the share of Google searches ending with no click at all rose from 60.45% in 2024 to 68.01% in early 2026, according to a SparkToro study. Nothing suggests Belgium is escaping that trend.
The click doesn't disappear the same way everywhere
Some relative good news: not every search is affected equally. Branded queries, local searches and high-intent transactional queries still convert well. And being cited as a source inside an AI Overview generates about 35% more organic clicks than an equivalent page that isn't cited. The challenge is no longer just ranking well. It's becoming the source the AI chooses to cite.
The AI view, people first
Tracking, query by query, which pages get cited in AI Overviews or absorbed with no click is work AI can largely automate: structure audits, alerts on pages losing visibility, before/after comparisons on strategic keywords. But deciding which pages to prioritise, which content architecture and which structured data will actually make the difference for citation, that remains a strategic call. AI executes. Expertise decides, and watches.
This week's to-do
In Google Search Console, compare click and impression volumes on your informational queries before and after an AI Overview appears. Check that your key pages (brand, local, products) carry up-to-date structured data. Prioritise content that answers a question clearly and quickly, rather than pages that circle around the topic.
Auditing your exposure to AI Overviews and redefining content priorities is the role of Vistalaro Pilot, your dedicated senior marketer. Making your pages technically eligible for citation, structure, speed, structured data, falls under Vistalaro Build. Both move together: a strategy without a solid technical base isn't enough, and neither is the reverse.