A new study has found that AI Overviews (AIOs) lower the number of users who click through to websites after searching, without improving the user experience.
The Impact of Google AI Overviews on Publisher Traffic and User Experience, released in April this year, used a custom Chrome extension to randomly assign 1,000 real users to either standard Google Search with Google’s AIO or a version without them, and compared the behaviour of each group.
Professors Saharsh Agarwal and Ananya Sen, who conducted the study, found that AIOs reduced outbound organic clicks by 39.8% and increased zero-click searches by 34.5%. The researchers also suggested that AI Mode, where users interact with a chatbot like Google Gemini instead of a search bar, may cause ‘even greater reductions in traffic to downstream publishers’, despite users reporting significantly lower satisfaction, quality of information and ease of finding information when in AI mode.
The study’s conclusion explains that, in contrast to suggestions that these AIOs might encourage users to check out more of the websites on a search page, the summaries ‘primarily replace visits to external websites’.
Neither sponsored clicks nor the number of searches users made were affected, and the surveyed users did not report an improvement in the perceived quality of search results or how easy it was to find information.
The study concludes that the impact of AIOs on publishers is ‘likely to be substantial’, adding: ‘Our evidence points to a redistribution of value within the ecosystem, in which search platforms may increasingly capture user attention.’
The researchers express concerns that ‘while AI integration can streamline access to information, it may simultaneously undermine the economic incentives that sustain high-quality content production.’
This is a concern shared by many of the UK publishers which have blocked Google from using their content in AIOs and AI Modes since this option was introduced by the UK government. Google’s general manager at Google Search Ecosystem, Mrinalini Loew, has stated that these controls will be tested in the UK before being rolled out globally.
However, Tim Cowen, co-founder of the Movement for an Open Web (MOW) and competition lawyer at Preiskel, told The Guardian that these rules were only a first step in supporting publishers whose traffic is being cut down by the introduction of these opt-outs.
He said: ‘There is a long way to go. It doesn’t provide a mechanism for monetisation, or what enforcement against Google looks like. There is a lot of difficulty for publishers determining what the value of content for AI use actually is.’
The Impact of Google AI Overviews on Publisher Traffic and User Experience: Evidence from a Field Experiment by Saharsh Agarwal and Ananya Sen was published in SSRN on 3 April 2026