He Lost 50% of His Google Traffic to AI Overviews (Here's How He Recovered)

E1115: Endre Olsvik Elvestad built a large SEO program around SignLab, a sign-language learning company. Its websites offered searchable sign language videos across multiple countries. Then Google AI Overviews appeared. SignLab lost about 50% of its Google clicks. High-intent traffic and app downloads fell even harder. Google could show the answer directly in search by displaying SignLab's videos, leaving users with no reason to visit the website. In this episode, Endre explains what happened, why the original programmatic SEO strategy stopped producing the same results, and how the company rebuilt organic acquisition across Google, YouTube, and AI search. We cover: - How AI Overviews reduced clicks while rankings and impressions often stayed stable - Why losing website visits caused a much larger drop in app downloads - How SignLab moved thousands of sign language videos from self-hosting to YouTube - The upload limits, verification issues, and automation challenges involved - Why YouTube became an important search engine for sign language queries - Why YouTube improved visibility without fully replacing website conversions - The difference between top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel traffic - Which queries produced the most app downloads after the decline - Why "Does Duolingo have ASL?" became a strong bottom-of-funnel topic - How the team shifted from individual sign queries to broader communication problems - Why traditional SEO fundamentals still mattered after AI Overviews - How SignLab manages separate SEO strategies across multiple countries and domains - Why direct translation was not enough for international SEO - How AI agents help with research, outlines, writing, review, publishing, and updates - Why content must reflect the culture, search behavior, and needs of each country - How customer reviews can feed new topics into an automated SEO workflow - What useful, specific, reviewed AI-generated content looks like - Which tactics were less useful, including gray-hat LLM tactics and expensive monitoring tools - The few actions that drove most of the recovery This case study is for anyone dealing with declining organic clicks, zero-click search, AI Overviews, programmatic SEO, international SEO, YouTube SEO, or AI-assisted content production. SignLab did not recover by finding a shortcut. It recovered by changing its content, expanding into YouTube, targeting queries closer to conversion, and applying solid SEO practices across every market. ⭐️ Endre Olsvik Elvestad on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/endreelvestad/  ⭐️ Endre Olsvik Elvestad's company, SignLab - https://www.signlab.co/  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ Will Qu on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/will-qu/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Traffic Cut in Half 00:27 Sign Language SEO Model 01:37 AI Overviews Steal Videos 05:25 App Downloads Collapse 07:19 Working With David 09:44 Recovery Strategy Shift 15:24 YouTube Migration Plan 16:08 Upload Limits and Workflow 18:41 Verification to Scale Uploads 20:52 Titles Format and Editing 25:25 Replacing Embeds and SERP Impact 26:59 Why It Felt Unfair 32:31 YouTube Beats AI Answers 34:38 SEO Reset With Experts 36:16 What Good Content Means 38:21 Middle vs Bottom Funnel 42:00 Links And Topical Authority 44:06 Agentic Multilingual Publishing 46:25 Avoiding AI Translation Traps 51:12 Automated Content Feedback Loops 57:12 What Actually Drove Recovery 59:15 LLM Visibility And Community 01:01:40 Lessons And Closing The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #searchengineoptimization #seo #programmaticseo #digitalmarketing