Ask Google how the new Champions League format works, and the answer arrives before the links do. An AI summary sits at the top, and forum threads and videos take several of the spots below it. The sports news sites and blogs that used to hold those positions now start further down the page. 

Pew Research measured what this does to traffic. When Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a regular result on 8% of visits, compared with 15% when it did not. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1% of visits. 

The study covers US users, but AI Overviews now run in more than 200 countries and territories and more than 40 languages. For affiliates who depend on organic search, the same number of searches now ends in fewer visits. 

Which Searches Lose the Click 

Pew also looked at which searches get a summary. Just 8% of one- or two-word searches produced one. For searches that started with who, what, when or why, it was 60%. 

That maps closely onto sports content. “How does the new Champions League format work” and “who has won the most titles” are exactly the questions a summary answers well, so explainer pages built around them are the most exposed. Short searches like a team name plus “fixtures” rarely get a summary, but Google often answers those with its own score and table boxes. 

If your traffic has dropped, check your question pages first. They are the most likely place for the missing clicks. 

What Still Earns the Click 

The typical summary in Pew’s study was 67 words long. That is enough to explain a format or name a winner. It is too short for most of what makes a sports site worth visiting. 

Depth still earns the click. A full match preview with form, injuries, head-to-head record and a likely lineup gives the reader more than any summary can fit. 

So do pages people use rather than read. Fixture lists in local kickoff times, standings with recent form, stats pages and results archives get bookmarked and revisited, and a return visit never passes through Google’s results page. 

Speed matters on news that changes every matchday. A site known for posting team news and lineups first gets typed in directly. 

Local languages and smaller competitions are worth a look too. Fewer strong pages cover them, so ranking is easier, and readers searching for a second-tier league usually want the full table and fixtures. 

Opinion with a name behind it earns the click as well. A summary gives the consensus. A writer who picks a side, explains why and is right often enough gives readers a reason to come back. 

Facebook Groups Now Rank in Google 

Forums are the other thing taking space on the page. An Ahrefs study published in August looked at 145 million US search results and found Google’s “Discussions and forums” box on 11.7% of them. 

Reddit dominates that box. Facebook is second, and every Facebook link in it came from a post in a public Facebook Group. Facebook passed Quora for second place in January 2026. 

Two details matter for affiliates. Ahrefs found no link between the backlinks a thread had and how often it appeared, and almost every appearance was for an informational search. A public group that answers sports questions well can show up on Google’s results page with no link building behind it. 

Facebook is already on many affiliates’ channel lists, so this is a second way onto the same page. The box appears far more often in some countries than others, so search your own market’s questions and check whether it shows up before you invest. Groups also follow Meta’s rules on restricted categories, so keep what you post there informational and keep commercial conversations on channels you control. 

The Search Calendar Follows the Fixture List 

Sports search repeats itself. People look up lineups, kickoff times, previews and tables in the days and hours before a match, and the same questions come back every week. 

That makes the fixture list your content calendar. Publish the preview before the question peaks, and build recurring pages around each league: a weekly preview, a table with form, a matchday team-news page. Readers who find one good weekly page learn to come back to it directly. 

The calendar also tells you which readers matter most. Someone reading a match preview two hours before kickoff is closer to acting than someone browsing on a Tuesday. That is the moment to ask them to subscribe, while the next match is still on their mind. 

Turn One Visit into a Return 

Fewer visits from Google means each visit is worth more. Every reader who lands on your site should get a clear reason to come back without searching: a newsletter, app notifications or a Telegram channel with something recurring, like matchday team news or a weekly preview. 

The number that shows whether this works is the join rate: how many readers subscribe for every thousand visits. The number after that is how many of those subscribers reach a first-time conversion. 

This path rarely shows up cleanly in reports. Someone finds a preview through Google, joins your channel and converts a week later from a link in a message. Without tracking, that conversion arrives with no source, and search gets less credit than it earned. 

Give each series its own entry point. Telegram lets channel admins create separate named invite links and shows how many people joined through each one, so your weekly preview and your team-news page can each have their own link.  

For a newsletter, use a separate sign-up source for each series. After a month, you will know which pages bring readers who convert and which only bring visits. 

Google will keep answering more questions on its own page. The sites that feel it least will be the ones readers visit without searching first. 

Bro Partners works with sport news sites, blogs and app publishers across our sports verticals. If that sounds like your kind of work, get in with Bro.