Booking Holdings CEO: AI Overviews Are Squeezing SEO

Skift Take No travel business has found the silver bullet yet in how to show up prominently on a consistent basis within the major LLMs. As these platforms evolve, such an achievement becomes a moving target. Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel said Tuesday that the company saw pressure on organic search results from Google's AI Overviews in the second quarter, although it is a small part of overall business. "I do believe that some of the changes that were made in the display at Google definitely put some pressure on SEO," Fogel told analysts during the company's second-quarter earnings call. Booking spends billions of dollars annually on paid search, which is a much bigger part of its business than SEO. Fogel attributed the weakness to Google's AI Overviews, which generate summaries that sit at the top of search-results pages, downplaying the traditional blue links. Fogel said he doesn't like "losing SEO," adding that Booking's direct traffic, which is in the mid-60% range, "hasn't gone down at al