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Are Google’s AI Overviews taking traffic from my website?

Probably some. In Pew Research Center’s tracking of 900 US adults, people clicked a regular result on 8% of Google visits that showed an AI summary, against 15% on visits without one. Other studies agree on the direction through 2025 and disagree on the size, and Google says total clicks are “relatively stable” without publishing a figure.

  • Sources9 sources
  • GradedA to D per claim
  • UpdatedOctober 15, 2026

Key figure

8%vs 15%

of Google visits end in a click on a regular result, with and without an AI summary. Pew, Mar 2025 browsing.

A R08 In the research report

The full answer.

The studies. Ahrefs found a 34.5% lower click-through rate for the top result on searches with an AI Overview (March 2025) and 58% lower over two years to December 2025 (R10, R11, B). Seer found click-through on these searches fell 61% to September 2025, then rose 85% from a December 2025 low (R12, R13, B). Google’s statement gives no number (R14, D).

Local searches see them often. A hand check of 540 local business searches in three US cities found an AI Overview on 68% (R15, C).

Check your own site. In Google Search Console, compare impressions and clicks over the last 16 months for your top searches. Impressions holding while clicks fall is the pattern these studies describe.

Is a website still worth it? Yes, for a new reason: AI writes its answers from websites. In July 2025 OpenAI’s crawlers fetched about 1,100 pages for every visit they referred (R30, B), and business sites were 93% of the distinct websites cited for local questions (R16, B). Your site is the source of what AI says about you, whether or not anyone clicks.

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Sources.

Each claim above carries its id and a grade from A to D. The research report holds the full ledger.

  • R08 A

    Google visits end in a click on a regular result 8% of the time with an AI summary and 15% without; 1% click a link inside the summary.

    Pew Research Center, 2025-07-22 In the ledger

  • R10 B

    An AI Overview correlates with a 34.5% lower click-through rate for the top-ranked page.

    Ahrefs, 2025-04-17 In the ledger

  • R11 B

    Re-run over two years: 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranked page.

    Ahrefs, 2026-02-04 In the ledger

  • R12 B

    Organic click-through on searches with an AI Overview fell from 1.76% to 0.61%, down 61%.

    Seer Interactive, 2025-11-04 In the ledger

  • R13 B

    Click-through on searches with an AI Overview rose about 85%, from 1.3% (Dec 2025) to 2.4% (Feb 2026).

    Seer Interactive, 2026-04-24 In the ledger

  • R14 D

    Google says total organic clicks to websites are relatively stable year over year.

    Google, Liz Reid, Head of Search, 2025-08-06 In the ledger

  • R15 C

    An AI Overview appeared on 68% of local business searches.

    Whitespark, 2025-05-12 In the ledger

  • R16 B

    Businesses per local AI answer: AI Overview 2.5, AI Mode 3.5, ChatGPT 4.1; 20% to 33% overlap on repeat runs; Google Maps named a tracked business in 66% of searches vs 32% to 38% for AI; 93% of distinct cited domains were business sites.

    BrightLocal, Local AI Visibility Study, 2026-09-16 In the ledger

  • R30 B

    Pages crawled per referred visit, July 2025: OpenAI about 1,100, Anthropic about 38,000.

    Cloudflare, 2025-08-29 In the ledger

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