AI search summaries cause link clicks to drop by nearly 50%
A recent study by Pew Research Centre shows that users are much less likely to click on links when search results contain an AI summary.
If you have noticed a drop in traffic to your website lately, you aren’t alone. A recent study by Pew Research Centre shows that searchers are much less likely to click on links if a search result contains an AI summary.
This is most noticeable when the search prompt is lengthy or is in the form of a question. I recently searched for the following: ‘How do I roast a leg of lamb’ – the AI summary included detailed steps for preparation, roasting, resting, and serving, along with snippets of three videos.
In the past, I would have clicked on at least two website links to read and compare recipes so I could choose the ingredients and method I wanted to use (which was often a combination from both).
Now there is a very real temptation to simply ‘follow the instructions’ that the AI summary that Google’s Gemini so helpfully provides.
Of course, the problem with this, and with many AI summaries, is that all generative AI is prone to ‘hallucinations’ that cause them to provide incorrect information.
This is a problem for people who automatically trust the summaries, and it is a great loss for those who depend on organic search traffic for their business.
The type of search matters
The scenario above is an example of an informational query. These kinds of queries are most likely to be affected by AI summaries when it comes to link-clicks. Other types of queries – specifically navigational query (‘facebook login’ or ‘City of Hamilton blue box collection’) or a transactional query (‘buy Defibrillator Canada’ or ‘Download ChatGPT’) are less affected, claims a July 2026 article in Search Engine Journal.
This same article challenges Google’s statement that the link clicks that have been lost were not from high-value users. Their researchers found that the quality of link clicks was no different when an AI summary was shown, even if the number of link clicks dropped.
And it’s not just the number of link clicks that have changed. The same study shows that 26% of searchers ended their browsing session if the results started with an AI summary, compared to 16% when there was no summary. Once the browsing session is ended, there is little likelihood that the searcher will find themselves on your website.
Google claims that they are including links in their summaries, however Pew’s research does not support this, stating that only 1% of searches with AI resulted in a link click within the summary.
Perhaps the silver lining in this story is that Google is not the only search tool out there. We continue to hear stories of clients being contacted based on a response found using ChatGPT. Ensuring that your website is optimized for AI (AEO) is critical in this new search landscape.
Originally published: July 24, 2025
Last updated: July 3, 2026
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