Field Notes
Strategy
The opportunity is not just recovering lost traffic. It is becoming source material.
April 10, 2026
Recovering CTR loss from AI overviews is a defensive frame. The offensive move is being the source the overview is built from.
That means investing in original data, distinct point of view, and formats that answer engines can lift cleanly.
Defensive vs. offensive posture
Most teams currently frame AI search as damage control — how much CTR did we lose, what can we win back. That framing anchors you to the ranking era.
The offensive frame is to become the corpus. Publish the primary data, the definitive comparison, the canonical explainer. Let other sources cite you. That is what compounds.