News · AI and search
Google's AI Overviews cut clicks, but reward the sites they cite
When Google answers a search with an AI-generated summary instead of the usual list of results, far fewer people click through to the pages below it. A 2025 Seer Interactive study measured a 61% drop in organic click-through on those searches, and Ahrefs found a 58% drop in February 2026, nearly double what it measured eight months earlier.
Updated 2026-08-22
The half of the story that gets less attention
What doesn't get repeated as often: brands the AI Overview actually cites see roughly 120% more clicks per impression than uncited brands on the same query, according to that same Seer Interactive analysis. Traffic isn't vanishing, it's concentrating on fewer sites.
For local search specifically this matters less than the headline numbers suggest: AI Overviews still show up on a small share of local-intent searches, per research from Whitespark, though that share is climbing. And 81% of searches that do trigger an AI Overview happen on mobile, which is exactly where "near me" searches live.
What gets a business cited
The same things that already mattered: a page that answers the question in a clear sentence up front, no filler, plus a complete Business Profile with recent reviews. There's no new trick here, just less room for a site that doesn't say anything specific in its first paragraph.
Sources: Whitespark, Digital Information World.