Same rankings, less traffic, as Google adds more boxes
Google's first page now splits roughly in half between normal results and its own features, according to one SEO's comparison.
Your position in Google can stay exactly the same and your traffic can still fall. Aleyda Solis compared Google results pages from September 2025 with September 2026 and says the first page has changed shape. A year ago it held 7 to 8 organic results, the normal blue links that anyone can rank for, against 1 to 2 search features. Now she counts 4 to 5 organic results against 4 to 5 features.
What is taking the space
Features are the boxes Google builds itself. Solis lists AI Overviews, the AI written summary at the top, shopping packs, which she says now appear two or three times in many cases, People Also Ask, the drop down list of related questions, and local packs, the map with three nearby businesses. On top of that she points to more visibility for ads across many verticals.
The result is simple. There are fewer normal links on page one, and the ones that remain sit further down the screen. So the same ranking earns fewer clicks than it did last year.
Who this hits
Solis aimed this at ecommerce sites seeing year over year drops in organic traffic from their best non branded queries, meaning searches for a product or topic rather than for your business name. If that is you, and your rankings have not actually moved, this is the likely explanation.
As Solis put it, "It's not you, it's Google!"
It's not you, it's Google!
This is one SEO's comparison, not a Google announcement, and she does not say how many searches she looked at. But it matches what several people have been reporting about AI answers appearing on more and more searches, including in Google's question boxes.
What to do
Before you assume you have been hit by a Google update, check your own numbers. Open Google Search Console, go to the Performance report, and set it to compare the last three months with the same period last year. If your average position is flat or better but clicks are down, you are losing space on the page, not rankings. That is not something you fix with more content on the same terms.
Then go and search your two or three most important non branded terms yourself, on a phone, and count what sits above your listing. If it is four features deep, put your effort into the searches where you still get a clean shot at a click, and into the pages people land on once they do.