Google now writes its own answer at the top of a lot of searches. It is called an AI Overview. The person gets what they came for right there on the results page, and often never clicks through to a website. If that website is yours, that stings.
The short version
- When an AI answer shows up, people click a normal search result about 8% of the time. When there is no AI answer, they click about 15% of the time. That is roughly half the traffic, gone.
- People almost never click the small source links inside the AI answer. In one study it happened in about 1 out of every 100 visits.
- Google says there is no secret file or code that gets you into these answers. The same work that helps you show up in search helps you get picked.
- Small businesses still win the searches that matter most: local, specific, and ready to buy. Put your effort there.
What changed
The Pew Research Center followed 900 people in the United States and looked at about 69,000 of their real Google searches in March 2025. Roughly 1 in 5 of those searches showed an AI summary at the top. For searches phrased as a question, it was 3 in 5. Google has kept expanding the feature since, so those numbers are a floor, not a ceiling.
Here is the part that matters. On searches with an AI summary, people clicked a regular result only 8% of the time. On searches without one, they clicked 15% of the time. They were also more likely to just stop. About 26% ended their session on a page with an AI summary, compared with 16% without one.
People in the search business call this a “zero-click search.” The person asks a question, reads the answer, and never leaves Google. For a small business, some of that lost traffic was never worth much. Nobody searching “what is a sales funnel” was about to hire you. But some of it was worth a lot. Searches like “how much does a bathroom remodel cost” or “do I need a permit for a fence in Portland” used to send people to a helpful page on somebody’s site. That somebody often got the job. Now Google answers in place, and the visit never happens.
The pages that lose the most are the ones that only ever ranked for general questions. A blog post titled “why website speed matters” might have pulled a few hundred visits a month. An AI Overview can answer that question completely, using your post as one of several sources, and send you nothing. Pages that answer a question only you can answer, because it involves your prices, your area, or your process, are much safer.
How to tell if it is happening to you
Open Google Search Console, the free tool that shows how your site does in search. Look at the last 6 months and compare two numbers: impressions (how often you showed up) and clicks (how often someone came through).
- If impressions are flat or up but clicks are down, an AI Overview is likely sitting above your result and absorbing the click.
- Sort your pages by clicks lost. If the drop is concentrated on general, informational posts, that is the expected pattern. If it is hitting your service and location pages, that is more urgent.
Google’s advice is boring, and that is good news
There is a small industry forming around “generative engine optimization,” or GEO. A lot of it is people selling you a new set of letters for work you should already be doing.
Google has been clear about what it takes to appear in AI Overviews. Its own documentation says there are “no additional requirements” and that you do not need to build special AI files or markup. What Google does want is the usual list:
- Your pages can be read by Google’s crawler. A crawler is the bot that reads your site so Google can list it.
- Your important information is real text, not words baked into an image.
- Your structured data matches what people actually see on the page. Structured data is a bit of code that spells out plain facts about your business, like your hours, your location, and your prices.
- Your Google Business Profile is filled in and current.
That is the same set of basics that has decided search rankings for years. One useful detail: to build a summary, Google runs several related searches behind the scenes and pulls sources for each one. So an AI answer can point to a wider mix of pages than the old top-ten list. That is a real opening for a smaller site with one page that answers one specific question clearly and completely.
Where small businesses still win
AI summaries are weakest exactly where a local business is strongest.
Local searches. “Emergency plumber near me” does not get a tidy paragraph. It gets a map, reviews, and phone numbers, and the person is ready to call someone in the next ten minutes. That click is worth real money, and it still happens.
Specific, high-stakes questions. The more an answer depends on someone’s exact situation, the less a general summary helps. “Can I turn my garage into a rental in my county” needs a person who knows the local code. People know that, and they go looking for that person.
Choosing who to trust. Someone deciding between two contractors in your town is reading your reviews, your past work, and your prices. An AI summary does not make that call for them.
So make sure your site does those jobs well. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and updated, because Google now leans on profile freshness, photos, and reviews to pick who shows up locally. State plainly what you do, where you do it, and what it costs, or at least where the price starts. Put the key facts near the top of the page in plain sentences, not buried under three paragraphs of warm-up. A short “Frequently asked questions” block on a service page is a genuinely useful move here: it answers real buyer questions in a format both a rushed customer and a crawler can use.
What to stop doing
Stop pouring effort into broad, general blog traffic. If your plan was to rank for “benefits of a fast website” and hope a few readers become clients, that path was always leaky. AI Overviews made it worse. Write for the exact questions your customers ask right before they hire someone: “how long does a kitchen remodel take,” “what does your process look like,” “do you work in my area.”
Be careful with “GEO packages.” If a vendor is selling an AI service built on secret files or special markup, check it against Google’s own documentation first. Google says those files do nothing here.
And do not panic. The searches that were always going to turn into customers still turn into customers. The low-value traffic is what is drying up. That just makes it matter more that your real pages are good.
How I can help
A free website health check now includes a look at how your site holds up in AI search. I check whether your core pages are text-based and readable by crawlers, whether your structured data matches your content, whether your Google Business Profile is giving Google the right facts, and whether the information a customer needs is near the top of the page or hidden. I also read your Search Console data and tell you which pages are actually losing clicks and why.
If the check turns up problems, the fix is usually a short list, not a rebuild. Reshape a few key pages, add or correct structured data, tighten up your service and pricing details, and get your Business Profile in order. If the site has deeper issues, we talk about a redesign or a fresh build, and you know the cost before you commit to anything.
Sources
- Pew Research Center, “Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results” (July 2025)
- Google Search Central, “AI features and your website”
- Google Search Central, “Structured data general guidelines”
- Google, “Search Console: the Performance report”