Google’s AI Overviews Are Gutting Your Web Traffic, And Here's the Data to Prove It

If you’ve noticed a quiet drop in organic traffic over the past year, you're not alone, and it’s not your SEO strategy that's failing. It's Google itself.

Last week, the Pew Research Center released data confirming what many of us suspected: Google’s AI Overviews are decimating website click-throughs.

Let’s break it down:

• Searches without AI Overviews? 15% of users clicked through to a website

• Searches with AI Overviews? Just 8% clicked

• Users clicking links within the AI Overview itself? Only 1%

That means users are asking questions, getting a synthesized AI answer, and leaving, without ever visiting your site.

Google, of course, says the study is flawed and insists that “billions of clicks” are still happening. But the lived experience of thousands of businesses tells another story: AI is intercepting your audience before they reach you.

The Shift in Search Behavior

This is the most important stat from Pew’s research:
60% of searches phrased as questions now show an AI Overview.

These are bottom-of-funnel, intent-rich searches. And if you're not cited in those Overviews, you're invisible.

To make matters worse, AI Overviews often source from places like Reddit, Wikipedia, and YouTube, not your expertly crafted blog post or product page.

And even if you are cited? There’s only a 1% chance a user will click.

What This Means for Founders and Marketers

You’re no longer competing for page-one rankings. You’re competing to be quoted by the AI itself.

This is the heart of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the emerging discipline of crafting web content that gets cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and others. And what I teach in my AI Visibility (GEO) course.

AI is now the homepage. It’s the first, and often last, stop for users searching online.

If your website isn’t optimized for AI visibility, you’re playing the wrong game.

Bottom Line:
The traffic drop isn’t a mystery. It’s math. And it’s time we stopped pretending otherwise.

Want to future-proof your brand’s visibility? Start optimizing for AI, not just Google. I’ll show you how.