Pew Analysis Middle tracked actual net looking conduct and confirmed what many publishers and SEOs have claimed: AI Overviews doesn’t ship visitors again to web sites. The outcomes present that the injury attributable to AI summaries to the online ecosystem is as dangerous as or worse than is usually understood.
Methodology
The Pew Analysis examine tracked over 900 adults who consented to putting in a web-based looking tracker to document their looking conduct within the month of March 2025. The dataset comprises 68,879 distinctive Google search queries, and a complete of 12,593 queries triggered an AI abstract.
Confirmed: Google AI Search Is Eroding Referral Visitors
The tracked person information confirms writer complaints a couple of drop in referral visitors attributable to AI search outcomes. Google customers who encounter an AI search end result are much less prone to click on on a hyperlink and go to an internet site than customers who see solely a regular search end result.
Solely 8% of customers who encountered an AI abstract clicked a hyperlink (within the AI abstract or the usual search outcomes) to go to an internet site. Customers who solely noticed a regular search end result tended to click on to go to an internet site 15% of the time, almost twice as many as customers who seen an AI abstract.
Customers hardly ever click on a hyperlink inside an AI abstract. Just one% of customers clicked an AI abstract hyperlink and visited an internet site.
AI Summaries Trigger Much less Internet Engagement
In a latest interview, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai pushed again on the notion that AI summaries have a unfavorable affect on the internet ecosystem. He mentioned that the truth that there’s extra content material being created on the internet than at every other time is proof that the online ecosystem is prospering. He mentioned that
“So, typically there are extra net pages… I believe persons are producing lots of content material, and I see customers consuming lots of content material. We see it in our merchandise.”
Pichai additionally insisted that persons are consuming content material throughout a number of types of content material (video, pictures, textual content) and that publishers right now needs to be presenting content material inside greater than only one format.
Nevertheless, opposite to what Google’s CEO mentioned, AI just isn’t encouraging customers to eat extra content material, it’s having the alternative impact. The Pew analysis information exhibits that AI summaries trigger customers to have interaction much less with net content material.
In response to the analysis findings:
Customers Finish Their Shopping Session
“Google customers usually tend to finish their looking session totally after visiting a search web page with an AI abstract than on pages with no abstract.
This occurred on 26% of pages with an AI abstract, in contrast with 16% of pages with solely conventional search outcomes.”
Customers Chorus From Clicking On Conventional Search Hyperlinks
It additionally says that customers tended to not click on on a conventional search end result when confronted with an AI abstract:
“Customers who encountered an AI abstract clicked on a conventional search end result hyperlink in 8% of all visits. Those that didn’t encounter an AI abstract clicked on a search end result almost twice as usually (15% of visits).”
Just one% Click on Quotation Hyperlinks In AI Summaries
Customers who see an AI abstract overwhelmingly don’t click on the citations to the web sites that the AI abstract hyperlinks to.
The report exhibits:
“Google customers who encountered an AI abstract additionally hardly ever clicked on a hyperlink within the abstract itself. This occurred in simply 1% of all visits to pages with such a abstract.”
This confirms what publishers and SEOs have been saying to Google over and over: Google AI Overviews robs publishers of referral visitors. Rob is a robust phrase however given the context that Google is utilizing net content material to “synthesize” a solution to a search question that doesn’t end in a referral click on, the phrase “rob” is what inevitably involves thoughts to a writer or search engine optimization who labored onerous to create the content material.
One other startling reality shared in analysis is that just about 66% of customers both browsed some other place on Google or fully bailed on Google with out clicking a hyperlink to go to an internet site. In different phrases, almost 66% of Google’s customers don’t click on a hyperlink to go to the online ecosystem.
The report explains:
“…the most important share of Google searches in our examine resulted within the person both looking elsewhere on Google or leaving the positioning totally with out clicking a hyperlink within the search outcomes. Round two-thirds of all searches resulted in one among these actions.”
Wikipedia, YouTube And Reddit Dominate Google Searches
Google has been holding writer occasions and Search Central Dwell occasions all around the globe to take heed to writer suggestions and to vow that Google will work more durable to floor a higher number of content material. I do know that the Googlers at these occasions usually are not mendacity, however these guarantees of surfacing extra high-quality content material are subverted by the grim information offered within the Pew analysis of precise customers.
One of many largest complaints is that Reddit and Wikipedia dominate the search outcomes. The analysis validates writer and search engine optimization considerations as a result of it exhibits that not solely are Reddit and Wikipedia essentially the most generally cited web sites, however Google’s personal YouTube ranks among the many high three most cited net locations.
The report explains:
“Essentially the most incessantly cited sources in each Google AI summaries and commonplace search outcomes are Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit. These three websites are essentially the most generally linked sources in AI summaries and commonplace search outcomes alike.
Collectively, they accounted for 15% of the sources that have been listed within the AI summaries we examined. They made up the same share (17%) of the sources listed in commonplace search outcomes.”
The report additionally exhibits:
- “Wikipedia hyperlinks are considerably extra frequent in AI summaries than in commonplace search pages”
- “YouTube hyperlinks are considerably extra frequent in commonplace search outcomes than in AI summaries.”
These Are The Info
Pew Analysis’s examine of over 68,000 search queries from the looking habits of over 900 adults reveals that Google’s AI summaries sharply scale back clicks to web sites, with simply 8% of customers clicking any hyperlink and only one% partaking with citations in AI solutions.
Customers encountering AI summaries usually tend to finish their classes or keep inside Google’s ecosystem fairly than visiting impartial web sites. This confirms writer and search engine optimization considerations that AI-driven search erodes net visitors and concentrates consideration on a couple of dominant platforms like Wikipedia, Reddit, and YouTube.
These are the information. They present that SEOs and publishers are proper that AI Overviews is siphoning visitors out of the online ecosystem.
Featured Picture by Shutterstock/Asier Romero
