The single question we hear most often from SA ecommerce brands right now: 'Search Console says impressions are up 40 percent year on year but clicks are flat, what is going on?' The answer is almost always AI Overviews. Google's AI Overview now renders above the first blue link on a rising share of commercial and informational queries. When it does, your listing still receives an impression, but the click goes to the AI Overview citation (if you are cited) or nowhere at all (if the searcher accepts the summary and moves on). Traditional SEO reporting was built for a SERP where impressions and clicks moved together. That correlation is now broken.
The fix is not to double down on the old SEO playbook. Content that ranks in position 3 on a query with an AI Overview above it will keep earning impressions and losing clicks until either you appear in the AI Overview citation, or the AI Overview is removed. AEO is the discipline of getting into that citation set. Schema that validates, content structured for extraction, question-based coverage of the queries that matter, and continuous tracking of which surfaces are eating which of your queries. Most SA agencies are still selling SEO retainers as if the SERP has not changed. It has changed. The retainer needs to change too.
The other failure mode is treating AEO as a schema plugin install. Adding FAQPage schema to a page whose copy is not written to be extractable does nothing. The plugin renders the markup, Google reads it, and still picks a cleaner answer from a competitor. AEO works when the copy, the schema, and the internal linking are aligned. That takes editorial work, not just a plugin. It also takes weekly attention to Search Console. The answer surfaces reshuffle constantly; a page that wins the Featured Snippet in June can lose it in July if a competitor publishes a tighter answer.