AI Overviews
The generated summary Google places above the results, written from pages it cites — answering the question on the results page instead of sending the reader on.
For a publisher this changes what a ranking is worth. Being cited in the summary is visibility without a visit, and the queries most exposed are the ones a short paragraph can settle — definitions, prices, versions, what changed in a release.
What gets cited tends to be what is easy to lift: a direct answer near the top, a clear heading above it, a claim tied to a source. That is the same writing that serves a reader in a hurry, so the work is not wasted if the summary never appears.
The measurement problem is real and worth naming. Impressions can stay flat while clicks fall, and the analytics will not explain why, because the reader was answered somewhere you cannot see.