Google AI Mode rolled out to the default SERP for logged-in US users in early February. By the end of April, every client I had with a meaningful featured-snippet footprint had lost most of it — and the click-through patterns had inverted.
What the data shows
Across nine client properties, featured-snippet impressions dropped between 38% and 71% in the 90 days after AI Mode became default. Click-through on remaining snippets fell further. But citations inside AI Mode answers — counted as a separate impression class in GSC — picked up roughly two-thirds of the lost volume.
- Snippet impressions: -54% median across nine sites.
- AI Mode citation impressions: +312% from a small base, now meaningful.
- Net session traffic from those queries: -12% — recoverable, not catastrophic.
What gets cited now
The same content patterns that won snippets in 2023 — concise definitional paragraphs, ordered lists for processes, tables for comparisons — still win citations. The difference is volume: AI Mode cites three to five sources per answer where featured snippets cited one. The pie got smaller but more people get a slice.
Stop optimising for being the one answer. Start optimising for being one of five.
The new optimisation target
Write the paragraph that answers the question completely in 40-80 words, then put it as the first paragraph under a question-shaped H2. That's it. The rest of the page can be long, but the citation candidate has to be near the top, self-contained, and unambiguously answering.