Google’s AI Overviews Didn’t Hurt Search Performance, New Incrementality Data Reveals

Measured, the AI-powered marketing effectiveness platform trusted by enterprise brands, released new research showing that incremental revenue and orders for brands grew after Google rolled out its AI Overviews feature broadly in September 2025. The analysis, based on 139 brands, found that median incremental revenue increased 3.4% and median incremental orders increased 3.2% while ad spend remained essentially flat.

The findings challenge the assumption that AI-generated search results weaken traditional search as a performance channel. While platform metrics may have given marketers reason to question if AI Overviews were reducing search effectiveness during the period Measured analyzed, the company’s incrementality data shows that brands in its data set actually saw stronger results across key metrics.

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“Many marketers spent the back half of 2025 worried that Google’s AI Overviews would erode search effectiveness,” said Trevor Testwuide, CEO and co-founder of Measured. “What our data shows is that the channel didn’t weaken search; it concentrated it. The clicks that went away were the ones that were never going to convert anyway. The advertisers who watched incrementality instead of click-through rate saw that clearly. They kept investing and they came out ahead.”

The disconnect between platform reporting and incrementality measurement is central to the analysis. In an AI-shaped search environment, traditional metrics such as click-through rate may no longer tell the full story. AI Overviews is quite effective at answering informational queries directly, but those queries are often from lower-intent users who were less likely to convert in the first place. The remaining clicks may come from shoppers who are further along in the purchase journey.

Omnichannel brands that use digital ads to drive in store sales stood out in the analysis. Among brands that also measure the incremental impact of paid media on retail store sales, median retail incremental revenue grew 43.7% and incremental orders grew 22.5%. Incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) for this subset rose from $1.35 to $1.47 across three consecutive months in the first quarter of 2026, pointing to sustained performance rather than a seasonal blip. These gains were not driven by cuts in ad spend, as median spend among the omnichannel subset grew 38% after the launch of AI Overviews.

The report suggests that brands that continued to invest in Google ads and paid search campaigns through the AI Overviews rollout were better positioned to capture expanded search demand. For omnichannel advertisers in particular, maintaining coverage across purchase-intent queries helped convert search activity into incremental revenue and orders.