Contributors:
Amol Ghemud Published: February 18, 2026
Summary
Fintech organic traffic dropped an average of 12-18% in 2025. The primary driver isn’t algorithm penalties. It’s AI Overviews absorbing clicks that used to go to your site. Google AI Overviews now appear on 30% of US queries, causing a 61% drop in organic CTR for affected keywords. Global publisher Google’s traffic dropped 33% between November 2024 and November 2025. Zero-click searches rose from 56% to 69% between May 2024 and May 2025. The problem isn’t that Google penalized you. The problem is that AI answered the question before users reached your site. Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks, but brands not cited on the same queries suffer a full 65% CTR decline. You can diagnose whether AI is eating your traffic by comparing Search Console impressions versus clicks trends, testing your top 20 queries in ChatGPT and AI Overviews manually, checking if competitors appear in AI answers for your terms, reviewing crawl logs for AI bot activity, and cross-referencing traffic drops with AI Overview rollout dates.
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The 61% drop in CTR isn’t an algorithmic penalty. It’s AI Overviews absorbing clicks that used to go to your site.
Your organic traffic dropped 15-25% in 2025. You looked at algorithm updates. You checked your Core Web Vitals. You reviewed your backlinks. Everything seemed fine.
The problem isn’t your site. It’s AI Overviews.
Google AI Overviews now answer financial questions before users click your result. They appear on 30% of US queries. For fintech keywords, that number is probably 50% or more. When more than two-thirds of searches end without a click to your website, you’ve got a problem. And your competitors’ traffic declined too. But that’s cold comfort when your CAC is up and your organic pipeline is shrinking.
Here’s what’s actually happening. AI Overviews drove a 61% drop in organic CTR and a 68% drop in paid CTR, according to Seer Interactive’s September 2025 study. Users see the AI overview answer and leave. There’s no algorithm violation. There’s just no click.
But there’s good news. Brands that restructured for AI visibility are seeing traffic recover. Fi. Money went from zero AI citations to the top-cited in six months. Vance moved from ignored to appearing in 12 of their top 20 AI Overview queries. The brands that move now will own the second half of 2025. Those who wait will lose more ground to competitors.
This diagnostic playbook helps you figure out whether AI is eating your traffic and what to do about it.
The data: how much organic traffic has fintech actually lost?
Organic traffic from Google to the top 40,000 US websites dropped 2.5% year-over-year in 2025. That’s the Similarweb and Graphite data. But the story gets darker when you look at global publishers.
Global publisher Google traffic dropped 33% between November 2024 and November 2025, according to Chartbeat. That’s not a minor fluctuation. That’s a fundamental shift in how users interact with search results.
Zero-click searches rose from 56% to 69% between May 2024 and May 2025. When more than two-thirds of searches end without a click to your website, you’ve got a problem.
AI Overviews appear on nearly 30% of US queries now. Google says they’ve reached 1.5 billion users across 200+ countries. Fintech is especially exposed because financial queries trigger AI Overviews at higher rates than most other industries.
Your competitors’ traffic declined too. But that’s cold comfort when your CAC is up and your organic pipeline is shrinking.
Why AI Overviews are the biggest culprit (not algorithm updates)
AI Overviews drive a 61% drop in organic CTR and a 68% drop in paid CTR. That’s from Seer Interactive’s September 2025 study. It’s the single biggest factor in your traffic decline, and it’s not because you got penalized.
Pew Research ran a test. Users clicked on organic results 15% of the time when there was no AI summary. With AI summaries present, that dropped to 8%. That’s a 46.7% reduction in clicks. Users got their answer from the AI overview and left.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks. Being in that overview matters enormously.
Brands not cited in the same queries suffer a full 65% decline in CTR. You’re invisible above the fold, and your traffic suffers accordingly.
The problem isn’t that Google penalized you. The problem is that AI answered the question before users reached your site. There’s no algorithm violation. There’s just no click.
The three scenarios behind your fintech traffic drop
Scenario 1: AI Overviews answering your head terms. Your branded and category keywords now have AI summaries. Users see the answer without clicking. You can verify this in Search Console by watching impression numbers stay flat while clicks decline.
Scenario 2: AI platforms citing competitors instead of you. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews pull from web sources. If your competitors consistently rank higher in these AI citations for your core queries, they’re capturing share. You need to test this manually.
Scenario 3: Genuine algorithm impact compounded by AI shift. Some fintech sites have legitimate Core Web Vitals issues or E-E-A-T gaps. Those problems worsened when AI began to dominate. Fixing content structure alone won’t help if your site speed is terrible.
There’s also a fintech-specific factor. RBI and SEBI compliance requirements make financial content formal and vague by necessity. AI systems struggle to extract clear, direct answers from regulatory language. That makes your content less citeable than competitors with simpler messaging.
Which scenario applies to you? That’s what the diagnosis steps will show.
How to diagnose whether AI is eating your fintech traffic
Step 1: Compare Search Console impressions versus clicks trend. Pull your data for the last 18 months. Look at your top 50 keywords. Plot impressions and clicks on the same graph. If impressions stayed flat or grew while clicks dropped, AI Overviews are absorbing traffic. A widening gap is a smoking gun.
Step 2: Manually test your top 20 queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Type in your core fintech terms. See what sources appear in the summaries. Are your competitors cited? Is your site mentioned? Document this for 20 keywords. You’ll see patterns immediately.
Step 3: Check if competitors appear in AI answers for your branded and category terms. Use a tool like Profound or Scrunch to scan which domains get cited across AI Overviews. If your competitor appears on five of the queries you target and you appear on none, you’ve got a visibility problem.
Step 4: Review crawl logs for AI bot activity. Check your server logs for traffic from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot. If these bots are crawling your site regularly but your content isn’t being cited, the content structure is the problem, not crawlability.
Step 5: Cross-reference traffic drops with AI Overview rollout dates. Google expanded AI Overviews substantially in May 2024 and again in November 2024. Pull your traffic graph from Google Analytics. Do your drops align with those rollout dates? If yes, AI is the culprit.
What fintech brands are doing about it (the GEO response)
Fi. Money went from zero AI visibility to becoming the top-cited source for smart deposit queries in Google AI Overviews. They restructured their content into self-contained answer blocks. They added RBI reference material. They published on third-party platforms like G2 and fintech publications. Within six months, their organic traffic from AI-driven queries increased 87%.
Vance, a cross-border payment platform, faced a different challenge. Their category terms were dominated by AI Overviews, but they were never cited. They audited their content depth. They added compliance certifications and regulatory references. They built authority through strategic content partnerships. Three months later, they appeared in 12 of their top 20 AI Overview queries.
Both brands shifted from SEO-only strategies to GEO plus SEO. GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It’s the practice of optimizing content for citation and extraction by AI systems. Traditional SEO gets clicks. GEO gets citations.
The brands that are winning share a pattern. Compliance-first content optimization. They lead with the RBI and SEBI context. They use structured data extensively. They build an FAQ schema. They optimize for entity recognition. Fintech content that sounds regulatory actually performs better with AI systems.
They’re also publishing beyond their own domain. Reddit threads, G2 reviews, and industry publication features. AI systems cite diverse sources. Owning three surfaces is worth more than dominating one.
The recovery playbook: 5 steps to reclaim lost traffic
Step 1: Audit your AI visibility baseline. Search for your top 50 keywords in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Document which ones have AI summaries. Which ones cite you? Which ones cite competitors? This baseline takes three hours. It’s non-negotiable. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Step 2: Restructure content for AI extraction. Fintech articles often bury the answer in paragraphs. AI systems like the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) format. Lead with the direct answer. Follow with context and detail. Add self-contained sections with headings. Use bullet points for key facts. This isn’t rewriting content. It’s reorganizing it for extraction.
Step 3: Add compliance signals. References to the RBI and SEBI make fintech content more authoritative to AI systems. Link to official guidelines. Quote regulatory definitions. A content piece that opens with SEBI compliance context will outrank the same article without it when fed to AI systems.
Step 4: Build citation authority on third-party platforms. Publish your fintech insights on G2, AngelList, Reddit, and fintech publications. AI systems crawl these platforms. Citations from multiple surfaces compound. You’re not abandoning your site. You’re creating multiple sources that point back to it.
Step 5: Monitor and iterate with AI search tools. Use Profound, Scrunch, or SEO tools that now track AI Overviews. Check monthly. Which queries changed? Which competitors moved up? Which of your optimizations worked? This isn’t set-and-forget. It’s a continuous iteration.
The playbook is clear. The window is closing.
The fintech companies that move now will own the second half of 2025. Those who wait will lose more ground to competitors. Audit the AI visibility baseline. Restructure content for extraction. Add compliance signals. Build third-party authority. Iterate monthly.
At upGrowth, we’ve helped Fi. Money and Vance recover from AI traffic absorption and build sustainable AI visibility. We know the diagnostic steps. We know the recovery playbook. We know what compliance-first content optimization looks like for fintech.
Your organic traffic didn’t drop because you did something wrong. It dropped because the distribution channel shifted. The brands recovering aren’t the ones with bigger budgets. They’re the ones who recognized the shift early and restructured for AI extraction.
If you’re seeing the traffic decline pattern we described (impressions flat, clicks dropping, competitors appearing in AI Overviews while you don’t), we can help you diagnose exactly what’s happening and build a recovery plan. We’ll audit your top 50 queries, show you where competitors are winning AI citations, and map out the exact content restructuring needed to reclaim that traffic.
1. How much fintech organic traffic has been lost to AI?
Global publisher traffic to Google dropped 33% year over year. Fintech was hit harder because financial queries trigger AI Overviews more frequently. We estimate fintech organic traffic declined 12-18% in 2025 for most Series A-C companies. Some saw drops above 25%.
2. Are AI Overviews affecting fintech more than other industries?
Yes. Financial queries have a higher AI Overview presence than most categories. Users searching for financial products want quick answers. AI Overviews deliver them. AI systems also prioritize regulated, official-sounding content. Fintech content citing RBI or SEBI guidelines is cited more often. The combination makes fintech uniquely exposed.
3. Can I recover lost organic traffic?
Yes, but it’s not traditional SEO. You’re optimizing for AI visibility, not just search rankings. The brands that recovered did so by restructuring content for extraction, building third-party authority, and adding compliance signals. Recovery typically takes 3-6 months to show results.
4. How long does it take to see results from GEO?
AI Overviews refresh faster than organic rankings. Some changes show impact within weeks. Comprehensive restructuring takes 6-12 weeks to fully roll out. The key is momentum. Each week you don’t optimize is a week your competitors gain citations.
5. Should I block AI crawlers from my fintech site?
No. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot guarantees you won’t be cited in AI Overviews. You’ll lose traffic to competitors. The better approach is to optimize for extraction and control what gets cited through structured data and content architecture.
6. What’s the difference between an algorithm penalty and AI traffic absorption?
Algorithm penalties hit specific content or domains. You see unnatural ranking drops in Search Console. Traffic to old URLs vanishes. AI traffic absorption is different. Your pages rank normally. Impressions stay high. Clicks drop because users get answers before clicking. The data signals are completely different.
7. Does RBI/SEBI compliance affect AI visibility?
Absolutely. Compliance references and regulatory citations make fintech content more trustworthy to AI systems. Content that opens with SEBI guidelines or RBI compliance context gets cited more often. This is an advantage for properly regulated fintech companies. Use it.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
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