Google AI summaries are cutting user clicks and site traffic, new data shows
Google’s AI Overviews, launched last year to show AI-generated summaries atop many U.S. Google search pages, are driving users to click fewer links. Online publishers blame this for declining web traffic, as users lean on summaries instead of visiting sites.
Pew Research Center tracked 900 U.S. adults’ browsing in March 2025. They found 58% saw at least one search with an AI summary. When AI summaries appeared, users clicked on traditional search links just 8% of the time—half the 15% click rate on results without summaries. 
Clicks inside the AI summaries themselves were even rarer, at just 1%. Users also ended their browsing sessions more often after encountering summaries—26% versus 16% without AI summaries.
“Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one.”
“Users very rarely clicked on the sources cited” in the AI summaries.
About one in five Google searches generated an AI summary. Longer, question-based, or full-sentence queries triggered summaries more often, with 53% of 10+ word searches producing them.
Most cited sources in both AI summaries and regular results? Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit—making up roughly 15-17% of links. AI summaries also lean more on government (.gov) sources than standard results (6% vs. 2%).
Pew’s report analyzed nearly 69,000 Google searches. It confirms searches with AI summaries halt user journeys sooner, reducing traffic flow beyond Google.
This data adds weight to publishers’ warnings that AI results change how people access news and info—cutting visits and ad revenue.
