Discussing how AI summaries are forcing iGaming to rethink traffic
As search engines begin displaying quick summaries instead of links, iGaming businesses are seeing fewer clicks, reduced traffic, and mounting pressure to adjust their online strategies. To understand the impact, SiGMA News spoke with two SEO experts about how these changes are already reshaping content strategies, traffic patterns, and visibility in organic search.
In recent weeks, the way we interact with the internet has evolved. Search engines are no longer simply directing users to external websites: they’re starting to answer questions themselves. Google’s new “AI Overviews,” now being rolled out across its search interface, feature AI-generated summaries at the top of results pages, drawing on information from a wide range of sources. As of today, the feature has launched in the UK. Tools like ChatGPT offer similar instant responses to users.
The result? Fewer users are clicking through to traditional websites, a shift that’s already having a clear impact on web traffic.
This new search experience is also starting to reshape the online visibility of the iGaming industry — and not entirely for the better, according to several voices within the sector.
Informational content, one of the engines of iGaming SEO, until now
For iGaming websites, traffic is everything. One long-standing strategy has been to capture users through informational searches, then guide them toward transactional pages.
“Over 50% of iGaming’s organic traffic comes from informational searches: blog posts, guides, strategies,” explained Tina Dimitrijevic, an SEO strategist for SiGMA. “These act as the primary funnel for affiliate and operator conversions.”
In other words, while users may initially land on a page to learn about the rules of blackjack or the best casino bonuses in Canada, they are ultimately nudged toward making real-money decisions. This has made high-ranking informational content an essential part of SEO and affiliate marketing strategies in iGaming — until now.
Thomas Kraska, CEO of Rankstar, agreed that informational content makes up the bulk of search demand. “Let’s say 60 to 70 percent of the queries, guides, blog posts, questions, they’re informational,” he said. “But it depends on how you define it. Some queries like ‘how to connect to Winamax’ are partly navigational, but still count as informational in intent.”
Kraska noted that while some AI answers may reduce clicks, not all informational queries are equally vulnerable. “If someone asks, ‘What is an online casino?’, that’s just a definition. If your page only offers that, you could lose 70% of your clicks. But those aren’t the pages that really matter, and one should not depend on those low-quality clicks.”
However, for deeper, or more commercial queries, he believes the situation is different. “If someone asks ‘What’s the best crypto casino in Canada right now?’, the AI might give a short list, but people still want to dig deeper. Maybe you’ll lose 5%, but the clicks you get will be more qualified.”
Clicks are falling, fast
Many in the industry say they are already seeing a significant drop in search traffic, especially when AI summaries appear above their links.
“The shift is accelerating,” Dimitrijevic warned. “AI summaries in search results have caused traffic drops of 50 to 70% on many informational pages. Users now often get their answers without clicking.”
That figure is echoed in a new Guardian-reported study by analytics firm Authoritas, which found that “a site previously ranked first in a search result could lose about 79% of its traffic for that query if results were delivered below an AI overview.”
A second study cited in the same article, conducted by Pew Research Centre, found that users “only clicked a link under an AI summary once every 100 times.” A Google spokesperson disputed the findings, saying they were “inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions,” but concerns among publishers continue to rise.
Kraska, who founded the SEO agency Rankstar, said he has also observed the trend directly: “We’ve seen 10 to 20 percent traffic losses, especially for very simple queries that the AI can answer in three lines. Those pages weren’t very useful anyway.”
AI visibility isn’t all bad — if you’re a brand
While many affiliates see AI summaries as a threat, some operators have noticed unexpected upsides. According to Kraska, high-performing brands are getting more mentions from AI systems like ChatGPT, which can indirectly drive branded search traffic.
“We saw that when one of our large affiliate clients started getting mentioned a lot in ChatGPT, their branded search doubled, without increasing ads or doing extra marketing,” he said. “That’s traffic coming from people who saw the name in ChatGPT and then Googled it later.”
Still, the conversion potential of being featured in AI summaries remains low for most. “Fewer than 1% of users click sources inside AI summaries,” said Dimitrijevic. “For affiliates, these impressions are mostly useless without clicks, meaning no traffic, no revenue.”
Time to adapt or vanish
Both experts emphasised the urgency for the iGaming industry to adapt its content strategy.
“It’s not too late, but urgent,” said Dimitrijevic. “Those who move fast can still adapt and stay competitive; those who don’t will lose visibility in organic search.”
Kraska suggested leaning into more in-depth or commercial content and optimising titles and meta descriptions to increase click-through rates. “You have to make the user curious,” he said. “Even if the AI gives a full overview, if your title says something like ‘Get €50 free’ or ‘Compare 30 casinos side-by-side,’ people will still click.”
He also pointed out the value of auto-suggest visibility in search: “If someone types ‘best crypto casino UK’ and sees your brand in the suggestions, they’re more likely to click your site, and you might avoid the AI summary altogether.”
For now, many users still view these summaries as unreliable. People weigh the need for accurate information against the effort required to find it. But that balance may not last. As the underlying models improve and the summaries become more accurate, faster, and better at reflecting nuance, it’s likely that user trust will grow. If that happens, the habit of clicking through to original sources could decline even further, fundamentally changing how we interact with content online and how industries like iGaming compete for attention.
And while the current disruption may feel like a threat, the long game could offer opportunity. Artificial Intelligence is already evolving into the industry’s ally, not only in SEO but also in promoting responsible gaming and safeguarding integrity.
