The top-ranking result on Google now loses most of its clicks the moment an AI Overview appears above it. According to Ahrefs’ study of 300,000 keywords, published on 4 February 2026 using Google Search Console data, AI Overviews cut the average click-through rate of the top organic result by 58% between December 2023 and December 2025. Eight months earlier, the same study measured a 34.5% drop. The effect nearly doubled in that window.
That single number reorders where business buyers, including the operators and suppliers who make purchasing decisions in iGaming, first find the companies they end up working with.
Search clicks are collapsing
For keywords that trigger an AI Overview, position 1 click-through rate fell from 0.073% to 0.016% over the two years, a 78% decline, according to the same Ahrefs study. Position 2 lost about half its clicks. Even position 10 fell nearly 20%. Other measurements point the same way: Seer Interactive recorded organic click-through down 61% and paid click-through down 68% on queries carrying an AI Overview, while Authoritas put the range at 47.5% to 79% depending on method.
User behaviour data matches the keyword data. The Pew Research Center analysed 68,879 real Google searches from 900 US adults in July 2025 and found that when an AI Overview appears, 8% of users click any traditional result, against 15% when one does not. Only 1% click a source cited inside the AI answer. Gartner projected a 25% decline in traditional search engine volume by 2026 in a February 2024 press release.
AI answers are the new discovery layer, and they cite LinkedIn
As search sends fewer clicks, the AI answer itself becomes the place where buyers first meet a company. The domains those answers cite now carry the weight that search rank used to. For professional queries, one domain sits at the top: LinkedIn.
Profound analysed 1.4 million AI citations between 15 November 2025 and 15 February 2026 across six platforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Copilot and Perplexity. LinkedIn was the most-cited domain for professional queries on all six. On ChatGPT, LinkedIn’s domain rank rose from about 11th to about 5th in three months, more than doubling its citation frequency. Profound recorded it as the largest domain-authority shift it tracked all year.
Semrush, working with LinkedIn, ran a parallel study of 325,000 prompts across ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode and Perplexity in January and February 2026, identifying 89,000 LinkedIn URLs. It found LinkedIn was the second most-cited domain overall, behind only Reddit, appearing in 11% of AI responses on average, 14.3% on ChatGPT Search and 13.5% on Google AI Mode. That placed LinkedIn ahead of Wikipedia, YouTube and every major news publisher in the dataset.
What gets cited is published content
The citations point at what people publish, not their profiles. In Profound’s data, posts, articles and newsletters rose from 26.9% to 34.9% of LinkedIn citations in three months, while profile-page citations fell from 33.9% to 14.5%. Semrush found 95% of cited content was original rather than reshared. Articles of 500 to 2,000 words and posts of 50 to 299 words were cited most often. The format that AI search rewards is the same one a trade publisher produces every day.
B2B buyers already read LinkedIn
The audience is there to read it. The 2025 Edelman-LinkedIn B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, based on nearly 2,000 global professionals, found that 63% of hidden buyers and 64% of target buyers spend more than an hour a week reading thought-leadership content. In the same report, 75% of decision-makers said a piece of thought leadership had prompted them to research a product or service they had not previously considered.
That reading happens well before any purchase. The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s work for the LinkedIn B2B Institute, summarised by Professor John Dawes as the 95-5 rule, holds that about 95% of B2B buyers are not in-market at any given time. Brands that are already known when the buying moment arrives win the shortlist.
The iGaming picture
iGaming makes the case sharper, because its buyer search volume is small. Semrush monthly search volumes for the core buyer terms, “casino platform provider”, “sportsbook software”, “igaming payment solutions”, “white label casino” and “game aggregator”, run into the low thousands at most. Consumer gambling terms such as “free spins” and “casino bonus” carry volumes in the hundreds of thousands. Almost all of the search demand in the sector comes from players, not from the operators and suppliers who buy B2B services.
That shapes how iGaming media makes money. Most iGaming news sites monetise player traffic through affiliate sections. By TGE’s analysis of Semrush and Similarweb data, the majority of visits to several iGaming news sites land on affiliate and casino-review pages rather than news. The industry’s professional conversation, covering regulation, M&A, hiring and market data, runs on LinkedIn instead.
How TGE reached 1.5 million members on LinkedIn
TGE built its audience on that channel. In the last 90 days, its LinkedIn analytics record 2.5 million impressions, 1.5 million unique members reached and more than 30,000 reactions. All of it is organic, with no bots and no paid promotion, from a verified page on a Premium company subscription.
The audience your brand is missing
Every week those 1.5 million professionals spend on LinkedIn, they see someone. They see the operators posting results, the suppliers running the data threads, the executives arguing in the comments. The brands that show up become the names buyers already know when a contract comes up. The ones that stay quiet are simply not in the room.
Most iGaming companies are still spending on search, affiliate placements and player-facing SEO, chasing traffic that never buys anything B2B. Their competitors are building recognition in the one channel where buyers actually read and where AI answers now source their citations. That gap widens every month it goes unaddressed.
This is the audience your brand is missing. 2.5 million impressions and 1.5 million professionals reached in 90 days is what consistent presence on this feed looks like, and there is room for a small number of partners inside it.
Drop your email below and we will send you our media pack. The brands that move first take the space.
Source: The iGaming Europe
