The numbers are brutal, click-through rates plummeting by up to 89% for certain queries, zero-click searches ballooning to 69%, educational platforms like Chegg reporting 49% traffic declines.
Google's response? AI Overviews drive "higher quality" clicks and traffic remains stable. Publishers watching their analytics dashboards tell a different story.
The Traffic Collapse: Real Numbers From Real Publishers
Independent research contradicts Google's optimism at every turn. Pew Research Center tracked 68,000 actual search queries and found users clicked on results just 8% of the time when AI summaries appeared, compared to 15% without them. That's a 46.7% drop.
Ahrefs analysed position-one click-through rates for informational keywords triggering AI Overviews. They dropped 34.5%. Ryan Law, their Director of Content Marketing, put it plainly: "Google says being featured in an AI Overview leads to higher click-through rates… Logic disagrees, and now, so does our data".
The most alarming evidence comes from DMG Media, owner of MailOnline and Metro. In their submission to the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, they reported desktop click-through rates collapsed from 25.23% to just 2.79% when AI Overviews appeared. An 89% drop.
Yes, that's worse-case rather than average. But it illustrates what happens when users get answers before they ever leave Google's results page.
Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, challenged Google's "stable traffic" narrative directly: "Since Google rolled out AI Overviews in your search results, median year-over-year referral traffic from Google Search to premium publishers is down 10%".
The timing matters. Zero-click searches increased from 56% to 69% between May 2024 and May 2025, precisely when AI Overviews rolled out globally. Correlation doesn't prove causation, but the pattern is hard to ignore.
One Exception: Why Branded Searches Are Thriving
Amid the carnage, branded searches tell a completely different story.
Amsive's research found branded queries with AI Overviews see an 18% increase in click-through rate. Compare that to the 34-46% decline in generic terms and you've got a performance gap that will reshape how marketing budgets get allocated.
When AI Overviews mention specific brands, they signal authority. Users seeing their preferred brand in an AI summary are more likely to click through, especially as these overviews often include store hours, contact details, and direct links.
The protection extends beyond direct brand searches. Queries combining brand names with product categories show smaller traffic declines than purely generic searches. Even partial brand recognition helps.
What this means, we're heading toward a two-tier internet where established brands flourish and smaller content creators face mounting pressure. The rich get richer. The unknown stays unknown.
Google's Counter-Narrative: More Features, More Partnerships
In December 2025, Google announced several features designed to position itself as curator rather than competitor. Whether publishers buy it is another question.
Preferred Sources goes global. Users can now customise Top Stories to see more from favourite outlets, with the feature launching globally for English-language users this month before rolling out to all supported languages early 2026. Early adoption shows nearly 90,000 unique sources selected, from local blogs to global news outlets, and when users pick a preferred source, they click to that site twice as much on average. Good news for those who make the cut.
News subscriptions get prioritised
Google is launching a feature that highlights links from users' news subscriptions, making it easier to spot content from trusted sources. Subscribed publications will be prioritised and shown in a dedicated carousel, first rolling out to the Gemini app before expanding to AI Overviews and AI Mode. For publishers struggling with traffic declines, this at least offers a pathway to retain subscribers who value their content.
Social channels get Search Console integration
In an acknowledgment that digital presence extends beyond owned websites, Google is experimenting with unified performance reporting. The new Search Console Insights report now includes performance data for social channels associated with your website, showing total reach, content performance, top queries driving users to social profiles, audience location, and traffic from Image Search, Video Search, News Search, and Discover.
Currently rolling out to a limited set of websites, with channels automatically identified by Search Console, this signals Google recognises users increasingly consume content across multiple platforms. For UK publishers losing traffic to AI Overviews, understanding how social channels perform in search reveals alternative distribution strategies.
More inline links in AI Mode
Google claims it's "increasing the number of inline links in AI Mode" and adding "contextual introductions", short statements explaining why a link might be helpful to visit. The company is also expanding Web Guide, which uses AI to organise links into helpful topic groups for complex searches, making it twice as fast and showing it on more searches.
Commercial partnerships with major publishers
Google is piloting a partnership programme with news publishers globally, including Der Spiegel, El País, The Guardian, and The Washington Post, to explore how AI can drive more engaged audiences. These experiments include AI-powered article overviews on participating publications' Google News pages and audio briefings for users who prefer listening. Google is also partnering with organisations like The Associated Press to include real-time information in the Gemini app.
Whether these gestures address the fundamental economic disruption remains an open question, particularly as Google simultaneously expands AI Mode internationally and rolls out voice-activated AI conversations.
What This Means for Business Owners and Marketing Teams
If your business relies on organic search traffic, and most do, this shift affects you directly. Here's what you need to understand.
Your content marketing ROI is changing
That blog post ranking position one used to drive significant traffic. Now it might get cited in an AI Overview while your click-through rate drops by a third. The effort required to create content hasn't changed, but the return is declining fast. This means you need to rethink how you measure content success and where you allocate resources.
Acquiring Top of Funnel customers is changing
If you've built your SEO strategy around ranking for broad, informational queries like "how to choose running shoes" or "what is email marketing," prepare for greater challenges, as AI Overviews will aim to tackle this. AI Overviews answer these questions directly. Users don't need to click anymore. To win visibility in AI, your content strategy needs to shift toward depth, specificity, and new insights.
Brand recognition just became your best defence
The data is unambiguous: branded searches see an 18% traffic increase with AI Overviews while generic terms drop 34-46%. If you're a small business or startup without strong brand recognition, you're vulnerable. Investment in brand building, through PR, thought leadership, consistent presence across channels, and customer experience, has moved from nice-to-have to essential.
Your competitors are probably ignoring this
Most businesses haven't adjusted their strategy yet. They're still measuring success by rankings and treating this as a temporary disruption. That creates opportunity. Early movers who adapt their content strategy, diversify traffic sources, and invest in brands will pull ahead while others scramble to understand why their traffic is declining.
The SEO playbook needs rewriting
Traditional SEO tactics focused on ranking well and capturing clicks. The new playbook focuses on getting cited in AI Overviews, building direct audience relationships, and creating content so valuable that people seek you out by name. Stuart Forrest from Bauer Media put it clearly, "We need to make sure that it's us being cited and not our rivals". Being mentioned matters more than being position one.
Key Takeaways
Here's what UK businesses and marketing teams need to do now.
1. Audit your traffic sources immediately
Run the numbers. What percentage of your traffic comes from organic search? Which queries are being affected by AI Overviews?
Use Google Search Console's new social channels integration to understand your complete search presence across platforms. If you're over-dependent on organic search (more than 40% of total traffic), you're exposed.
2. Diversify traffic channels aggressively
David Higgerson from Reach outlined the approach: "We need to go and find where audiences are elsewhere and build relationships with them there. We've got millions of people who receive our alerts on WhatsApp. We've built newsletters". Build email lists. Launch a podcast. Create LinkedIn content. Invest in push notifications. Develop mobile app features.
These channels aren't affected by AI Overview disruptions and give you direct audience access.
3. Double down on brand building
Make your brand memorable. Create consistent visual identity. Develop a distinctive voice. Get featured in industry publications. Speak at events. Build partnerships. When users search "your brand name + [product category]," you're protected from AI Overview traffic losses.
Google's Preferred Sources feature rewards this, users who select you as a preferred source click through twice as often.
4. Test and optimise for AI Overview citations
Google provides no manual for this. You need to experiment. Create structured content that AI can easily parse and cite. Use clear formatting, data-backed claims, and expert quotes.
Monitor which content gets cited in AI Overviews using premium tools or manual searches. Iterate based on what works. Getting cited maintains visibility even when clicks drop.
5. Shift content strategy toward depth and specificity
Stop creating thin content targeting generic keywords. AI Overviews handle that now. Create comprehensive resources that go deep on specific topics. Develop original research. Build interactive tools.
Produce content too nuanced for AI summaries. Target long-tail, high-intent queries where users need detailed answers and are more likely to click through.
6. Explore alternative revenue streams
If you're a content publisher or create substantial proprietary content, investigate licensing opportunities. News Corp and The Atlantic have partnered with OpenAI. Google is piloting commercial partnerships with major publishers.
These deals provide upfront payments and ongoing royalties. Terms remain confidential, but for businesses with valuable content libraries, this represents an alternative to advertising-dependent models.
7. Monitor competitors and market dynamics
Use tools to track which competitors get cited in AI Overviews for your target keywords. Understand what content formats, structures, and topics are working. Watch for sudden traffic drops in your sector.
The volatility data from Authoritas shows AI Overview placements change frequently, about 70% of cited pages changed over two to three months. This creates opportunities to displace competitors.
8. Prepare leadership and stakeholders
This isn't a temporary dip. It's a structural shift in how search works. CMOs and business owners need to understand that historical SEO performance doesn't predict future results.
Budget discussions should reflect the new reality, lower organic traffic, higher emphasis on brand and direct channels, increased investment in diverse traffic sources. Set realistic expectations now rather than explaining underperformance later.
The transition from the click-based internet to an AI-mediated one represents the most consequential platform shift since mobile disrupted desktop.
Publishers and businesses treating this as a temporary adjustment rather than permanent change risk joining the long list of organisations that failed to adapt to previous technological waves.
The question isn't whether AI Overviews affect traffic, the data confirms they do. The question is whether you'll adapt your strategy before your competitors do.
