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Fewer clicks from Google: what the numbers on AI Overviews really say
· 1 min read · 2 sources
Pew Research Center
Ahrefs
More and more Google searches get an AI Overview at the top: a summary with a few sources. Handy for the searcher, but what does it do to clicks to websites? Two studies give a clear picture.
Pew Research: half as many clicks
Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 American adults in March 2025, together 68,879 Google searches. When they saw an AI Overview, they clicked a regular search result in 8 percent of visits. Without an overview it was 15 percent.
Almost nobody clicked a link inside the overview itself: in 1 percent of visits. And after a page with an AI Overview, people more often stopped searching altogether: 26 percent against 16 percent without one.
Ahrefs: the top spot earns much less
Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords, half with and half without an AI Overview, using data from December 2025. For keywords with an AI Overview, the page in the top spot got 58 percent fewer clicks on average. An earlier Ahrefs measurement, in April 2025, came out at 34.5 percent. So the effect is growing.
Which searches get an overview
According to Pew, about one in five searches in March 2025 got an AI Overview. Long searches and questions get one far more often:
- One or two words: 8 percent got an overview.
- Ten words or more: 53 percent.
- Questions starting with who, what, when or why: 60 percent.
What does this mean for you?
- The very questions customers ask just before they choose (which, who, how much) get an AI Overview most often. That is where they click through least.
- Ranking high in Google is therefore no longer enough. What counts is whether you are named in the overview itself, as a business the assistant recommends.
- Measure it per buying question: which answers are you in, and who is named instead of you? That is exactly what the free Oddrank check shows.
Get AI to recommend you
Oddrank measures every week whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google name you, shows who is named instead, and sets out what to do about it.