When Google users encounter AI-generated summaries on the search results page, they are nearly half as likely to click on any result link, according to a new Pew Research Center study of 900 people. Specifically, users had a 15% chance of clicking a link when there was no “AI Overview,” which dropped to 8% when the summary was present.
Users were also more likely to abandon their search entirely when shown an AI summary: this happened in 26% of searches with an AI Overview, compared to 16% of searches with only traditional results.
Google remains the most visited website on the internet, processing 5 trillion searches per year.
As of May 2025, 1 in 5 searches featured an AI summary, which significantly reduced site traffic and revenue (by 20% to 40%), threatening the economic model that many websites rely on—clicks from Google.
These summaries average 67 words and typically draw from three sources. The most frequently cited sources are Wikipedia, government sites (.gov), Reddit, news media websites, and YouTube. However, these sources rarely benefit from extra clicks, with only 1% of users clicking on the linked sources.
