Google’s AI Overviews Cause Massive Drop in Clicks, Report Finds

Google launched AI Overviews with the goal of making online search faster and more helpful. However, a new study is raising serious concerns about their impact on content creators. According to a report by AI search and SEO platform Authoritas, publishers are seeing a per-query clickthrough rate loss of nearly 50% when AI Overviews appear on a search results page.

New study claims Google’s AI Overviews are a “zero-click” threat to publishers

The study was submitted as part of a legal complaint to the UK’s competition watchdog, the CMA. It measured the clickthrough rate decline across both mobile and desktop devices. The findings are crystal clear: when an AI Overview is present, publishers saw a drop of 47.5% in clickthrough rate on desktop. The click drop figure on mobile platforms is 37.7%.

This phenomenon is often referred to as “zero-click search.” The idea is that users find the information they need in the AI summary and don’t feel the need to click through to the original source. As you can already imagine, this is bad news for publishers who rely on web traffic. The report also noted that even if a site is featured in the top AI Overview position, the improvement in clicks is “minor” and still “considerably lower” than a search result page without an AI Overview at all.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this “zero-click search” derived from AI Overviews. Another recent study from the Pew Research Center resulted in quite similar—if not identical—findings.

Google defends its position

Google, however, disputes the findings. A spokesperson for the company told The Guardian that the study was “inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions and analysis.” The company claims that people are “gravitating to AI-powered experiences.” They also assert that these features create “new opportunities for websites to be discovered.” The spokesperson added that Google continues to send “billions of clicks to websites every day.” They also claim that the company has not seen “dramatic drops in aggregate web traffic” as the report suggests. Google has defended its position from the beginning by stating that its AI summaries result in “high-quality clicks.”

But the report’s authors believe the situation could get “even worse.” They point to the rollout of “AI Mode” in the US and its recent launch in the UK. Search’s “AI Mode” uses generative AI to answer almost every user question and follow-up question. The report also concludes that it’s “highly likely” that AI Overviews will appear for even more queries in the future. They could even potentially appear for “more than 90% of queries if it chose to do so.”

Publishers want option to opt out

In response to these concerns, the report that was submitted to the CMA said that publishers “urgently” need the ability to opt out of AI Overviews without being penalized in normal search results. The CMA, in turn, has stated its plans to give publishers more control over how their content is used in Google’s AI features. It’s a growing conflict between Google’s vision for the future of search and the publishers’ need to survive in the digital ecosystem.