Google AI Insights: Dramatic Impact on Web Traffic Revealed

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Key Takeaways

1Google has launched AI Overviews in France, raising concerns among website publishers regarding traffic.

2American studies show a significant decrease in clicks on organic results with the emergence of AI Overviews.

3The top positions in search results are the most affected, with a notable drop in the click-through rate.

💡Why it matters — AI Overviews are radically changing online user behavior, threatening the business model of content publishers.

Google Introduces AI Overviews in France

July 22, 2026 marks a crucial milestone for the French digital market with Google's launch of AI Overviews and AI Mode. After two years of anticipation, this feature, already rolled out in the United States since May 2024, is being closely monitored by website publishers and SEO experts. They fear a significant drop in their traffic, a concern supported by studies conducted across the Atlantic.

How Do AI Overviews Work?

AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of Google search results pages, surpassing traditional organic links. These summaries condense information from multiple web sources while displaying links to the pages used. Google specifies that these summaries are activated when its systems determine that an AI-optimized answer is relevant to the query. However, not all searches trigger an AIO.

AI Overviews Cause Traffic Decline

Since the introduction of AI Overviews in the United States, studies converge on an alarming finding: clicks on organic links decrease as soon as a summary is displayed. A study by the Pew Research Center in July 2025, involving 900 Americans and over 68,000 queries, showed that only 8% of searches with a summary resulted in an organic click, compared to 15% for searches without an overview. Furthermore, 26% of users left the page after reading the summary, compared to 16% during a search without an AIO. Google criticized this study, calling it biased and unrepresentative, claiming that overall traffic showed no significant decline.

Other studies corroborate these findings. In April 2025, Ahrefs observed a nearly 35% decrease in the average click-through rate for pages in the top position across 300,000 keywords. Define Media Group also noted a 42% drop in traffic across 64 editorial sites since May 2024.

CTR Drops Especially for First and Second Positions

The study by GrowthSRC in July 2025 reveals that the top positions in search results are the most affected by AI Overviews. By analyzing 200,000 keywords, they observed a 32% drop in the click-through rate for the first position, falling from 28% to 19%, and a 39% decrease for the second position. In contrast, positions 5 to 10 saw their click-through rates increase, with the last position gaining even 52%. This redistribution is attributed to users seeking more comprehensive information than what the AI summary provides.

Terakeet Engineering also noted as early as February 2025 that traffic was shifting to lower positions when AI Overviews were activated. Informational pages between positions 3 and 10 saw their traffic double, and transactional pages experienced a 3.6 increase.

Appearing in the AIO Does Not Compensate for Click Loss

Being featured in an AI Overview does not bring the expected benefits. The Pew Research Center showed that less than 1% of users clicked on the links provided by the AIO, contradicting Google's promises from May 2024. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, had then promised "higher click-through rates" for sites powering this feature.

Ahrefs confirmed in April 2025 that the click-through rate for a page at the top of the SERP decreases, whether it is cited by the AIO or not, dropping from 3.1% without AIO to 2.6% with it. AI Overviews, similar to Featured Snippets, aim to directly answer queries, which reduces the need for clicks.

Key Milestones in the History of AI Overviews

May 2023: Google introduces the Search Generative Experience (SGE) at Google I/O.
May 2024: Google unveils AI Overviews at Google I/O and launches them in the United States.
August 2024: Expansion to six other markets, including the United Kingdom.
October 2024: Coverage expands to over 100 countries, reaching one billion monthly users.
March 2025: Expansion of selected sources beyond the top 10, introduction of AI Mode.
May 2025: AI Mode rolled out in the United States, AI Overviews extended to over 200 countries, with initial tests in Europe outside of France.
July 2026: Deployment of AI Overviews and AI Mode in France.

Internet Users View the AIO as a Definitive Answer

In June 2025, Kevin Indig, author of the Growth Memo newsletter, published one of the few qualitative studies on AI Overviews. The goal? To understand how internet users interact with these summaries in real-world conditions. To achieve this, he combined various UX research methods, such as screen recording, mouse movement tracking, scrolling, and clicks, with a group of 70 participants. After subjecting each of them to eight search tasks, he drew several conclusions:

Focus on the Top of the Screen: When an AIO appears, users tend to concentrate their attention on the box, particularly its upper third. Few users in the panel scrolled down to the bottom of the summary, and even fewer to the organic results.
Asymmetry Between Intention and Action: Several participants stated they wanted to "check the sources" or "learn more," but did not click on the links provided by the summary. When clicks did occur, they primarily directed users to community platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
Usage Varies by Age: For the younger users in the sample, the AI-generated summary often serves as a final answer. It is rarely contested and seldom followed by further exploration. Older individuals tend to be more reserved and seek additional information.