Independent tracking • Updated monthly

How Google's AI Overviews Reshaped Search in Türkiye

Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode went live in Türkiye on 18 February 2026. We combine the visibility shift of each sector's market leaders (Semrush), 1,035 live SERP queries (17 sectors, ~9,740 organic results), and the first-party Search Console data of the sites we track. This dashboard is refreshed monthly.

Data window: Nov 2025 – Jun 2026 · Last update: 5 Jul 2026 · Sources: Semrush (market leaders, public), Ubersuggest live SERP (1,035 queries), Google Search Console (anonymized, first-party)

Summary: rankings held, clicks eroded

Across the sites we track, the post-18-Feb pattern is clear: rankings largely held, but informational queries lost a third of their clicks.

−56%

Health sector leaders (top 3) organic traffic (Feb→Jun)

−38%

Same leaders, in the launch month (Feb→Mar)

%59

Queries triggering an AIO (1035 live queries)

−60%

CTR drop in tracked finance sites (first-party)

How to read it: clicks falling while position holds is the classic AI Overview fingerprint. The user gets the answer inside the summary box and never clicks the blue link. This is not a ranking loss; it is a click evaporation.

For decision-makers: “ranking” no longer guarantees traffic

If the main question is still “what position are we”, the game may have changed underneath you. The same data shows it:

Evidence	Data
Position held, but clicks fell	~7.6 position / clicks −33%
The answer is served ahead of the blue link	AIO on 59% of queries
Clicks to a brand cited inside AIO	+%35
What enters the answer is not high authority (DA)	DA 44.6 vs 47 (lower)

The new question: not “what position am I”, but “does AI cite me, am I inside the answer, is my brand being searched”. Ranking is now a signal, not an outcome. Measurement and targets should shift to visibility, citations and branded search.

What changed for the market leaders: the 18 Feb break

Not the sites we track, but the top 3 market leaders of each sector combined. Semrush organic visibility (public data), indexed to February 2026 = 100.

Sector leaders (top 3) combined organic traffic index (Feb=100)

Sector leaders, year-over-year change

Sector	Leader (public)	YoY
Health	memorial.com.tr	−44%
Health	medicalpark.com.tr	−59%
Health	acıbadem.com.tr	−35%
E-commerce	akakce.com	−18%
E-commerce	cimri.com	−13%
Travel	tripadvisor.com.tr	−7%
Travel	etstur.com	−15%
Travel	enuygun.com	−13%

Headline: this is not one site's penalty, it is sector-wide. In health, the top 3 leaders (memorial, acıbadem, medicalpark) combined lost 38% of total organic visibility in the launch month (Feb→Mar) and 56% by June. E-commerce price-comparison leaders fell 17%, travel leaders 8%. So everyone is falling; travel is just falling slower. Finance/insurance is too volatile in Semrush's estimate, so it is read via first-party GSC CTR (−60%). Note: Semrush organic traffic is a modeled estimate that also reflects AIO CTR erosion.

First-party corroboration: CTR in tracked sites (anonymized)

We corroborate the market-leader picture with the first-party Search Console data of the sites we track (anonymized, aggregate). Pre-launch baseline 100. Cleanest AIO fingerprint: CTR falling at a stable position.

Clicks/day index (pre-launch = 100)

Click-through rate (CTR %) by month

Sector summary (pre-launch → June)

Sector	Clicks Δ	CTR Δ	Position	Pattern
E-commerce	−34%	~sabit	sabit (~7,4)	Marketplace fell, transactional held
Health	−5%	−19% (Mar-May)	~sabit (~6,5)	Small sample, early CTR pressure
Education	−33%	−36%	~sabit (~9)	Informational, classic AIO cannibalization
Finance/Insurance	−41%	−60%	oynak (~9)	Impressions up, clicks collapsed
Tech media	−23%	+13%	~sabit (~7,6)	Position held while clicks fell

Key distinction: the loss concentrates in informational queries; AIO fires less on purely transactional and local queries. Sector travel data is in the market-leader section above, which also shows a decline (−8%). Note: Feb–Jun spans winter to summer; seasonality is a factor, AIO is not the only cause. The cleanest fingerprint is CTR pressure at a stable position.

The impact deepens over time: 18 Feb was a start, not an endpoint

When AI Overviews launch in a country, full coverage does not arrive instantly; it spreads over months. Our Türkiye data shows the same.

Global AIO coverage (%) · grew over time

Validating the thesis

Coverage rose from ~6% (Jan 2025) to ~48-65% (early 2026, US) depending on methodology: Google states "~50%", some trackers (Xponent21/AWR) find 60-65%. AI Mode is a separate layer growing past 1 billion users. Türkiye launched on 18 Feb 2026, so we are very early on that curve.

In our data, click loss deepened month over month: March −17% → June −33%.
In finance/insurance, the CTR drop widened from −48% (March) to −60% (June).
Some sectors show a June CTR rebound: content is adapting (consistent with Seer's post-trough recovery finding).

Takeaway: for Türkiye this is not over, it is just beginning. In the mature market (US) coverage reached 50-65% depending on methodology, plus AI Mode is spreading; Türkiye is heading that way. That is why we refresh this dashboard monthly.

Where do AI Overviews appear?

1035 live Turkish queries across 17 sectors, checked on live SERPs (Ubersuggest + manual verification, Türkiye, July 2026).

AIO trigger rate (%) · by sector

AIO trigger by intent

Informational ("what/how")	%70
Commercial ("best X")	%60
Transactional (price/buy)	%37
Tool (calculators)	%25

AIO is strong on informational and comparison ("best X") queries; it does not fire on purely transactional ("price", "buy") or some definitional queries (legal sensitivity or Wikipedia dominance).

What does AI cite? Not authority, but relevance and community

Large-scale studies point one way: citation comes from relevance, structure, brand mentions and community content, not raw Domain Authority.

Average organic DA: AIO present vs absent (1035 queries / 9740 results)

What the large studies say

Per Peec AI's study of 30 million sources across 5 engines, the most-cited source is Reddit; Google AI Mode and AI Overviews favor social content (Facebook, Yelp, Reddit), while ChatGPT leans to editorial sources like Forbes/Techradar. OtterlyAI: 41% of cited YouTube videos have under 1,000 views.

Reddit is the #1 or #2 most-cited source across every LLM tested (Peec AI, 30M sources).
Google AI Mode/AIO favor social and community content over authority; popularity or DA is not decisive.
Our own live measurement of 1035 queries / 9740 results agrees: average DA is LOWER in AIO SERPs (44.6 vs 47) and the low-DA share is HIGHER (32% vs 27%).

The real finding (1035 live queries, 9740 results): in AIO-triggering SERPs what rises is not authority but community. Ekşi Sözlük appears in 37% of AIO SERPs vs only 19% of non-AIO; forums 21% vs 11%; Reddit 15% vs 6%; YouTube 49% vs 40%. So AIO fires on community/UGC-rich SERPs, not high-authority ones. This matches both our data and Peec AI's 30M sources. Next step: capturing the sources engines actually display, live.

Who gets cited? Türkiye vs the world

In the US, the #1 source for AI search is Reddit. And in Türkiye?

In Turkish SERPs (1035 queries)

Ekşi Sözlük (local "Reddit")	%37
YouTube (strong in health)	%49
Reddit (translated thread)	%15
Video/image SERP features	common

The global picture (public studies)

Reddit is the #1 or #2 most-cited source across every AI engine tested (Peec AI, 30M-source analysis).
YouTube is overtaking Reddit; in health it is cited more than hospital sites.
AI Mode cites 143% more unique domains than AI Overviews (more source diversity).
OtterlyAI: 41% of cited YouTube videos have under 1,000 views; structure > popularity.

The Türkiye difference: our local "Reddit" is Ekşi Sözlük. Across 1035 queries, Ekşi appeared in 37% of AIO SERPs and YouTube in 49%; Reddit only 15% (mostly translated threads). For Türkiye, community strategy should be built on Ekşi Sözlük and YouTube, not Reddit.

YouTube & community visibility: US vs Türkiye

We compared the same query types on live SERPs in both markets.

Dimension	🇺🇸 US	🇹🇷 Türkiye
Local community (UGC) source	Reddit (r/Appliances, r/BuyItForLife)	Ekşi Sözlük
Where YouTube is strong	Commercial reviews ("best X")	Health queries
AI-era SERP features	Perspectives, popular products (rich)	Fewer; developing
Maturity	Since 2024–25, mature	18 Feb 2026, ramping/learning

Implication: US SERPs carry more AI-era features ("perspectives", "popular products"); Türkiye is still simpler. This confirms Türkiye is ~1 year behind in maturity and the impact is only now deepening. YouTube is rising in both markets; in Türkiye the community side runs through Ekşi Sözlük, not Reddit.

Traffic is not vanishing, it is relocating

A shift from generic and informational queries toward branded search and high-intent AI referrals.

Finding	Value	Source
CTR on branded queries (with AIO)	+%18	Digital Applied
Organic clicks to a brand cited inside an AIO	+%35	Digital Applied
ChatGPT referral conversion	~7% (organic ~2%)	Emarketed / various
ChatGPT web visits growth (Sep 24→Mar 26)	+%84	Similarweb
AI referral share of web traffic	~1% (low volume, high intent)	various

Mechanism: when ChatGPT or an AI Overview recommends a brand, some users search the brand on Google instead of clicking the link. Result: clicks fall on generic/informational queries while branded search and cited-brand clicks rise. AI referral traffic is still small (~1%) but growing fast and converting far higher than organic. So this is not a collapse but a redistribution: volume down, intent and brand value up.

The new search user: keywords out, conversation in

Why does AIO surge on informational and how/which queries? Because users now type sentences, not keywords. (Google, How People Are Using AI Mode, May 2026)

Metric	Value
Average AI Mode query length	3x a traditional query
Follow-up query growth	+40% per month
Multimodal (voice/image/video) share	1 in 6 searches
Queries starting with which (6 mo)	+40% faster

What to do: Rewrite the keyword of your top 10 pages as the natural sentence an AI Mode user would type (I have flat feet and knee pain, which running shoe?). If your content does not answer that longer question, a competitor who does will fill the gap.

GEO & AEO recommendations: what the data implies

Concrete steps to stay visible in AI search.

1Lead with the answer (BLUF)Give the clear answer in the first 150 words; AIO lifts answers from the top of the page.
2Schema + E-E-A-TFAQ/Article/Author schema, author identity and dates feed citability.
3Invest in YouTubeTimestamped, long-form video; AIO/AI Mode citation is strong, especially in health.
4Show up on Ekşi & communitiesIn Türkiye UGC citations come via Ekşi Sözlük, not Reddit.
5Build topical authority, not just DAHigh DA does not guarantee AIO entry; topical depth and structure decide.
6Protect transactional/local pagesAIO does not fire on these; real traffic and conversion still live there.
7Measure at CTR-vs-stable-positionNot ranking, but CTR decline at a stable position reveals the true AIO impact.
8Agent-ready technical baseAllow AI bots in robots.txt, clean markdown/text, evaluate llms.txt.

Methodology & limitations

Transparency is the precondition for being citable.

Sample: 10 websites we track, mostly serving the Turkish market, and 1035 representative live Turkish SERP queries (17 sectors, ~9,740 organic results). All site data is used in aggregate, without client names.

Window: 1 Feb – 30 Jun 2026. The comparison baseline is the period before AIO launched on 18 Feb 2026 (1–17 Feb). Monthly trend covers March–June.

Sources: (1) Google Search Console · clicks, impressions, CTR, position (first-party, permitted properties). (2) Ubersuggest live SERP · AIO trigger, SERP features, Domain Authority, source domains (Türkiye, Turkish, July 2026). (3) Semrush · market leaders (trending websites), monthly organic traffic trend (domain_rank_history), organic ranking and volume. Semrush organic traffic is a modeled estimate that also reflects AIO CTR erosion.

Cross-validation note: Semrush's SERP-feature layer lags on AIO in Türkiye (e.g. it did not flag an AIO on a query where one appeared; one query was absent from Semrush's TR database). So AIO trigger relies on Ubersuggest live SERP + manual checks; Semrush is used for ranking/volume.

Limitations: Feb–Jun spans winter to summer; seasonality is a factor, AIO is not the only variable. Semrush organic traffic is a modeled estimate (also reflecting AIO CTR erosion). The market-leader trend is the sum of the top 3 players per sector; finance/insurance is too volatile in Semrush's estimate, so it is read via first-party GSC CTR. The DA/citation analysis is based on 1035 queries and 9740 organic results (large sample); the direction is clear. A measurement capturing the sources engines actually display (not the SERP pool) is deferred to next month. Travel is measured via sector market-leader data because the single tracked travel site was misleading. The dashboard is refreshed monthly.

Public benchmark sources: Peec AI (30M-source citation analysis), Pew Research, Search Engine Journal, OtterlyAI YouTube Citation Study 2026, 5W AI Platform Citation Index 2026, BrightEdge/Xponent21 (US AIO coverage), Zeo (Türkiye AIO launch 18 Feb 2026).