How will Google’s AI features impact bloggers in 2026? How to not only survive but positively thrive as a blogger in the AI era!

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AI Overviews and AI Mode are now common features in Google Search. How will Google’s expansion of AI features impact bloggers in 2026? It all depends on what you do. Here’s how to not only survive but positively thrive as a blogger in 2026 and beyond...

Google have started rolling out AI Overviews in Search. How will this affect bloggers? It all depends on what you do. Here’s how to not only survive but positively thrive as a blogger in the AI era. #AI #AIoverviews #GoogleAI #SEO #SEOtips #blogincome #bloggingincome #digitalproducts #blogmonetization #makemoneyblogging #blog #blogging #bloggers #professionalblogger #problogger #onlinebusiness #onlinebusinesssuccess #bloggingsuccess #contentmarketing #bloggingtips #productiveblogging

In May 2024 Google began rolling out AI Overviews (formerly SGE) in Search. AI overviews were initially only shown to US users.

Then in August 2024 Google began expanding beyond the US, to United Kingdom, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil.

And in October 2024 Google announced that they were rolling out AI Overviews to to over 100 more countries, making it available to over one billion users and in all supported languages.

Then in March 2025, Google began testing AI Mode in the US, before rolling it out to US users in May 2025 and then more widely from June 2025 onwards.

Google’s AI Mode is now available in over 200 countries and territories.

Why should we care about this?

Because, Google’s AI features have already had a dramatic effect on clicks to websites and website traffic.

And as Google continues to expand the capabilities of AI Overviews and AI Mode, and makes them increasingly more helpful and reliable, they are likely to have an ever more negative impact on search traffic.

Computer on a desk showing Google search page

Why such a huge drop?

The prediction is that as Google expands the capabilities of it’s AI features, more and more search queries will feature AI powered ‘answers’ via AI Overviews, and those ‘answers’ will become increasingly useful and reliable.

AI Overviews are very like featured snippets, but instead of pulling an answer from 1 website, Google provides an answer based on multiple sources. If you once had the top spot in the form of a featured snippet, you will likely find that you now share that top spot with several other websites – resulting in fewer clicks.

AI Overviews also take up a lot more space than a typical featured snippet, so if you don’t get featured, your result is going to be pushed even further down – again resulting in fewer clicks.

And Google is increasingly encouraging users to interact with the AI answers and ask follow up questions via AI Mode, giving users even less of a reason to click on the actual websites where the information AI Mode uses originated from.

As a result, more and more searchers will stay on Google, interacting with AI Overviews and AI Mode, instead of clicking through to a website for more information.

Image of an algorithm on a computer screen

How to thrive as a blogger in an era of AI-assisted search

So is it still possible to survive as a blogger in this new era of AI Overviews and AI Mode?

Absolutely!

Here are 5 things you can do to ensure you not only survive but positively thrive as a blogger in the AI era…

1. Write content that can’t be answered by Google

Not every query can be answered well by an AI powered chatbot. If you want to continue to rank well in Google, write the kind of content that users will want to click through to a real website to read.

Take a long hard look at your existing content and ask yourself… If I was searching for information on this topic, would I bother clicking through to a website, or would I be happy with an answer given to me by Google?

And bear this in mind when you write new content. Avoid writing about simple informational topics that could be answered easily by an AI overview.

2. Write unique content

This isn’t just good advice for the future, this is also important right now. One of the main things Google has about recent updates is that they are aiming to reduce ‘unoriginal content’ in the search results.

Again, take a long hard look at your content and ask yourself… Is this different to the other search results? Does this add value? Does it show my own unique take on this subject?

Unfortunately, a lot of SEO ‘advice’ out there tells you to look at what is currently ranking as a guide to what you should write if you want to rank. There are even SEO tools that will help you make sure your content contains all the same things that the current top ranking pages contain.

And there are blog post ‘formulas’ that give you an exact blog post structure to follow in order to rank well. The problem with this is that, if thousands of bloggers follow the exact same formula, your content is not going to be unique or original.

You should not be aiming to COPY what is already ranking. You should be aiming to write something BETTER than what is already ranking – and something that makes searchers want to click through to your result because they want to read your unique take on the subject and learn from your expertise, rather than rely on a non-expert chatbot.

3. Build a strong brand

Work on building up your authority in your niche. Become a ‘thought leader’ and ‘go-to expert’ in your niche. And build a community of raving fans, happy customers and advocates.

So, instead of going to Google, your people come directly to you, your website and your products for the solutions to their problems.

This will make you a whole lot less reliant on Google traffic, but it will also mean that, when people see you in the search results, they will be more likely to click through and read what you have to say on the subject.

4. Convert ‘borrowed’ traffic to ‘owned’ traffic

Google traffic is ‘borrowed’ traffic. Building your business on borrowed traffic is incredibly risky – especially given the direction Google is going in.

To reduce your exposure to this risk and protect your business from AI Overviews and AI Mode, you should be trying to convert as much of your current ‘borrowed’ traffic as you possibly can into ‘owned’ traffic – in other words, your email list.

Your email list is the only source of traffic you truly own.

The bigger your email list, the less reliant you will be on Google traffic. So as Google expands the capabilities of AI Overviews and AI Mode, and if search traffic drops as much as predicted, you will be much less impacted than those who still rely heavily on Google traffic.

5. Diversify into digital products

If you rely on ads for the majority of your income, you need huge traffic volumes to support that. And you will be most impacted as Google expands its AI capabilities.

(If you monetize solely via ads and your traffic drops by 60%, your income will also drop by 60% – that’s a HUGE drop in income!)

Digital products offer much higher RPMs than ads. This means that, by diversifying into digital products, you can earn significantly more income, even if your traffic drops.

Better still, digital product income is much more dependent on the size and quality of your email list than the amount of Google traffic you get.

This means, if you focus your efforts on building a strong email list and diversifying into digital products NOW, your income will become much less related to your Google traffic and so you won’t experience a massive drop in income if your Google traffic drops significantly.

(In fact, if you do a really good job with email marketing and digital products you may barely notice!)

Miniature trolley sitting on a laptop keyboard. The trolley contains a red sign saying 'sale'.

Want help with this?

I truly believe that the best way to protect yourself from the potentially massive drop in traffic and ad revenues that is predicted to come as Google continues to develop AI Overviews and AI Mode is to diversify into digital products.

However, most bloggers seriously underestimate what it takes to run a successful digital product based business.

It’s not sufficient to simply create a product and advertise it on your website.

You need to do market research, create a product your audience is actually willing to pay for, build a high converting sales page, launch your product properly, build an evergreen sales funnel, do digital product specific SEO, grow your own personal authority, harness the power of customer advocacy and convert your traffic into red hot leads with high converting lead magnets and new subscriber nurture sequences.

If you are thinking, ‘How on earth do I do all that?’, I have good news…

I’ve created the Digital Product Success Academy specifically to help bloggers like you make the leap into digital products and protect your business from whatever future curveballs Google throws at us.

DPSA a step-by-step roadmap that will take you along the entire journey of building out all the moving parts of a successful digital product based business.

Basically, I’ve done all the hard work for you and come up with the perfect step-by-step plan to follow, so you can just follow my roadmap and focus on one thing at a time.

Plus, there’s lots of support, motivation and accountability baked in AND a super supportive community of likeminded bloggers and online business owners to encourage and motivate you every step of the way.

If this resonates with you and you’re ready to take your online business to the next level, click here to find out more!

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