AI summaries are taking clicks away from websites

When Google shows an AI summary, people click through to websites about half as often. What a large tracking study found, and what it means for how you are found.

For two decades the deal with search was simple: write something useful, rank for it, and receive visitors. AI-generated summaries at the top of the results are changing the terms.

What the tracking data shows

Pew Research Center analysed the browsing of 900 US adults who agreed to have their activity tracked, covering 68,879 Google searches made in March 2025. About 18 percent of searches produced an AI summary. When one appeared, people clicked a traditional search result on 8 percent of visits, compared with 15 percent when there was no summary. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1 percent of visits.

People were also more likely to stop altogether. Browsing ended on the results page in 26 percent of visits with an AI summary, against 16 percent without one.

Which searches are affected

Summaries were far more likely on longer and question-style searches. Fifty-three percent of searches of ten words or more produced one, against 8 percent of one- or two-word searches, and 60 percent of searches phrased as questions did. The informational questions that content marketing has long targeted are exactly the ones most likely to be answered before anyone clicks.

What to do about it

• Be the source worth citing: original data, real expertise, specific answers. Generic explainers are the easiest content for a summary to replace.
• Invest in being searched for by name. People looking for you specifically are not stopped by a summary.
• Make each visit worth more. If fewer people arrive, each one needs a clearer path to contact or purchase.
• Measure clicks, not just rankings. A top position under a summary may deliver far fewer visitors than it used to.

Search will keep sending people to websites, but fewer of them, later in their thinking, and with higher expectations. The sites that win will offer something a summary cannot.