For Attorneys with a high ranking website and valuable, unique content, Google’s AI Mode changes nothing.
Glenn Gabe is, by far, my favorite SEO professional on planet Earth. Everyone in the industry knows who he is. He has access to the data for some of the most powerful websites on the Internet. Last week, Glenn wrote an article pointing out that as of July 2025, AI drives less than 1% of traffic to websites.
Yes, you read that correctly. We’re pulling our own data together here specific to sites in the legal niche, but, if you add up combined traffic from AI Mode, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc, legal sites get more traffic from Bing!
In June 2025, Lex Friedman interviewed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai (check out the YouTube video here). At 1:02:30, they discuss AI Mode for about 10 minutes.
Sundar says:
- As AI Mode evolves, Google will keep migrating it to the main page
- AI Mode will still deliver users to websites, and this will remain a core design principle
- Google’s metrics show AI Mode and AI Overviews help deliver higher quality traffic to websites because users have better context of what’s on a page prior to visiting it
Will AI Mode Make me Lose Traffic?
Absolutely. However, the traffic loss is from informational search queries. If someone has a legal need, they’re still going to hire an attorney. Google’s AI isn’t going to suddenly reduce the number of cases out there.
For more information on this, please see my article Google AI Overviews Reduces Traffic on Legal and Law Firm Websites, which describes Click Through Rate (CTR) reduction.
Len, Are You Just Biased?
No.
If you need a plumber, electrician, pizza delivery, or an attorney, you’re still going to call one.
AI Mode and AI Overviews could be absolutely devastating for some industries and niche websites. I wouldn’t suggest becoming a journalist anytime soon. The BBC touches on this with their article Is Google About to Destroy the Web?
How To Get Cases from Google AI Mode:
Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews frequently pull from reputable sources. Sources that are reputable according to their traditional algorithms. Therefore, having great content on a high ranking site is still key. That hasn’t changed since the 1990’s, and is unlikely to change any time soon. Read more about what we do here: SEO for Personal Injury Law Firms.
