Google AI Overviews Are Quietly Killing Website Traffic, Pew Research Confirms
New Pew study reveals users rarely click links in Google’s AI answers—web publishers are losing critical traffic.
3 min readHighlights
Only 1% of users click links in Google AI Overviews, confirms Pew Research.
Reddit, Wikipedia, and YouTube dominate AI citations—sidelining independent publishers.
AI results double the chances of users ending their browsing session without clicking anything.
Image Source: Designed by Martech Scholars using Canva Pro_Google AI summaries slash website clicks, reshaping online traffic behavior.
Ask ChatGPTA new Pew Research Center report has delivered a major blow to publishers and SEOs, confirming that Google’s AI-generated summaries—called AI Overviews—are quietly starving the web of user clicks.
The study analyzed over 68,000 unique Google search queries in March 2025, tracking the browsing habits of 900+ consenting U.S. adults. Its most alarming revelation? Only 1% of users clicked on a citation within AI summaries. Even more shocking, two-thirds of users didn’t click any links at all.
This confirms long-standing complaints that Google’s AI is siphoning attention away from independent publishers—without sending traffic back.
The Data Speaks Loud and Clear
According to Pew’s dataset:
- Out of 12,593 AI-triggered searches, only 8% resulted in users clicking any link.
- When no AI summary was shown, 15% of users clicked a link—nearly twice the engagement.
- Only 1% of users clicked a link within the AI summary itself.
- 26% of users ended their session after viewing AI results, compared to 16% with traditional search.
This dramatic difference shows that AI Overviews discourage user engagement, keeping searchers within Google’s walled garden.
Google’s Defense vs Reality
In a recent interview, Google CEO Sundar Pichai dismissed claims that AI Overviews are harming the open web.
“There are more webpages than ever. People are producing and consuming more content across formats—text, video, images.”
While Pichai insists content creation is booming, the actual browsing behavior tells a different story. AI answers are providing so much information upfront that users no longer feel the need to visit source websites.
So while Google benefits from using publisher content to generate AI answers, the creators of that content are left with zero engagement in return.
Publishers Are Losing Out
The tension boils down to one harsh reality: AI is built on web content—but doesn’t pay it forward.
Publishers spend time and resources creating in-depth content. But AI Overviews scrape that value to answer users instantly, bypassing the original source. It’s the digital equivalent of being cut out of your own conversation.
This shift marks a major disruption to the referral economy—the backbone of how websites survive. Ad revenue, affiliate links, newsletter signups, product sales—all depend on traffic.
If AI cuts that traffic off at the source, the entire web ecosystem suffers.
Reddit, Wikipedia & YouTube: The Big Winners
According to Pew’s findings, Google’s AI leans heavily on just a few platforms:
- Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit account for 15% of citations in AI Overviews.
- These same platforms also dominate standard search results with 17% of links.
That means while thousands of independent blogs and niche publishers compete for visibility, Google keeps directing users to the same few content giants—often its own property (YouTube).
This centralization of content authority contradicts Google’s promise to showcase a wider diversity of sources.
What This Means for SEO & Content Creators
The implications of this trend are massive for anyone in digital marketing or publishing:
- Traditional SEO strategies may become less effective if traffic is cut off.
- High-quality content might not be enough if it’s summarized by AI instead of clicked.
- Creators must now diversify formats (video, carousels, infographics) to remain competitive.
This also highlights the urgent need for:
- New engagement models outside of search (email lists, communities, apps)
- Greater publisher advocacy for fair AI usage
- Transparency from Google on how summaries are generated and which sources they favor
Closing Thoughts
Pew Research has given us hard proof: Google AI Overviews are changing how people interact with the web—and not for the better.
With click-through rates plummeting and users staying within the Google ecosystem, the future of the open web looks fragile. Unless urgent action is taken, thousands of websites—especially small publishers—could see their reach evaporate.
SEO isn’t just about algorithms anymore—it’s about defending the flow of traffic itself.
