Google is keeping your traffic. Here’s how eCommerce brands can fight back.

If your organic eCommerce traffic has felt a bit sluggish lately, you aren’t losing your mind. The search landscape has fundamentally fractured, and Google’s new AI Overviews are the main culprit.

For years, the SEO handshake was pretty simple. You put the effort into creating great content and perfectly optimised product pages, and in return, Google sent ready-to-buy customers to your store.

But what exactly happens when the world’s biggest search engine decides it wants to keep those customers for itself?

According to a new study from SE Ranking, that’s exactly what is happening right now. Google’s AI is increasingly building a “walled garden”, prioritising its own properties over independent websites and choking out top-of-funnel traffic in the process.

The endless “Search Loop”

When the SE Ranking team looked at over 1.3 million AI Overview citations across 20 industries, the data confirmed what a lot of us in the agency space have been suspecting for months. Google is now citing itself more than any other site on the entire web.

Right now, roughly 17.5% of all citations in Google’s AI answers come directly from Google. To put that in perspective, Google is linking to itself more than the next six major domains combined, beating out Amazon, Reddit, and Wikipedia. When you factor in YouTube and other Google-owned real estate, about one in five AI links keeps the user trapped inside the Google ecosystem.

Early on, we thought these AI links might just push people to Google Business Profiles. Not anymore. Today, nearly 60% of Google’s self-citations point directly to other traditional Google search results.

Instead of sending a user to your beautifully crafted buying guide, the AI Overview drops them into a mini search panel that just triggers another Google search. It creates this endless loop that keeps shoppers interacting with Google’s monetised ads, completely bypassing your website.

What this means for your revenue

The reality is that relying blindly on top-of-funnel organic traffic is becoming a massive risk.

People are getting “good enough” answers directly on the search results page. If the AI spoon-feeds them a summary of the best running shoes for flat feet, why would they click through to your blog? They won’t. And as a result, the sheer volume of organic traffic out there is going to shrink.

How to stop whining and start adapting

At Brave, we’ve spent two decades helping brands navigate exactly this kind of digital chaos. If Google is changing the rules, you just need to change your game plan.

• Fix your leaky bucket (CRO): If AI Overviews are going to shave 15% off your total traffic volume, you can’t afford a bad user experience. You need to extract maximum revenue from the traffic you do get. Stop ignoring conversion rate optimisation. You need to aggressively test and tweak your site to turn a much higher percentage of your current browsers into actual buyers.
• Stop writing fluff: AI can write a generic informational blog in three seconds. You aren’t going to win there anymore. Pivot your SEO strategy hard toward high-intent, bottom-of-funnel transactional keywords. Go after the searches where people already have their credit cards out and are looking for a specific product, not just browsing for ideas.
• Diversify or die: Putting all your eggs in Google’s organic basket was always a bad idea; today, it’s fatal. It is time to take complete control of your audience. You need a razor-sharp Paid Media strategy across Meta and Google Ads for guaranteed visibility, paired with an aggressive Email Marketing setup (like Klaviyo) to own your customer data and drive repeat purchases.

Google’s walled garden is only getting higher. The brands that survive this shift will be the ones that stop relying on a single traffic tap and start building a genuinely bulletproof, multi-channel strategy.

Ready to stop losing clicks and start driving real revenue? Let’s figure out exactly where your strategy is leaking. Reach out to the team at Brave today, and let’s talk growth.