A Pew Research Center study shows that Google AI Overviews affect user behavior negatively. Users are less likely to click on search result links when AI Overviews are present, with a significant drop in clicks compared to pages without them. In March 2025, 58 percent of users encountered AI-generated summaries, which resulted in only 8 percent of users clicking on search results, versus 15 percent for those without AI Overviews. The addition of backlinks to the search results did not significantly increase clicks on source links.
Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8 percent of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15 percent of visits).
The presence of those AI Overviews - summaries distilled from AI models trained on web content - on search results pages makes it more likely web users will end their browsing session.
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