“AI Overviews are killing website traffic” is the most repeated line in SEO. What do the studies actually say? Here is a summary, with each number attached to who measured it.
The numbers
| Study | What it found |
|---|---|
| SparkToro (Similarweb data, US, Jan–Apr 2026) | 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click, up from 60.45% in 2024. It links this to AI Overviews but does not isolate how much they caused. |
| A randomized field experiment (reported by Search Engine Journal) | AI Overviews cut organic clicks by 38% on the searches where they appeared. The authors call the results exploratory. |
| Seer Interactive (2025) | Organic click-through rate for informational searches with AI Overviews fell 61% since mid-2024. Searches without them also fell 41%, which hints that clicking is declining more broadly. |
| Pew Research Center | People clicked a result 8% of the time when an AI summary showed, versus 15% without one. |
A more hopeful result
Seer’s follow-up for the last quarter of 2025 found that for pages cited in AI Overviews, click-through rate fell 61% quarter over quarter, but clicks barely moved. The reason: impressions grew faster. Another study reported by Search Engine Journal found the clicks that were lost were not lower-quality than the clicks that remained.
Why the studies disagree
They measure different things (click rate versus total clicks), different query types, and different time periods. SparkToro says AI Overviews contribute to the rise in no-click searches, but its method cannot cleanly separate them from other causes. Search Engine Land also notes AI Mode was still a small share of searches in early 2026, though Google reports fast growth.
How to check your own site
Search Engine Journal’s “Ask an SEO” advice is simple:
- Make a list of keywords where AI Overviews appear and a similar list where they do not.
- Compare click-through rate for both lists before and after AI Overviews appeared.
- If only the first list dropped, AI Overviews are a likely cause.
What to do about it
- Aim to be cited inside the AI answer, not only ranked below it. (See how Reddit and other sources get cited.)
- Create pages worth clicking: original data, tools, deep guides and anything an AI summary cannot fully replace.
- Track impressions as well as clicks. Visibility has value even when the click does not happen.
