Google Search is shifting from a page centered on links toward a mix of generated answers and conversational search. AI Overviews put summaries into ordinary results; AI Mode turns searching into a back-and-forth experience that can explore several related questions. The change is significant, but its effect on publishers is not settled: Google reports relatively stable aggregate organic clicks, while a 2026 experiment found fewer external clicks when participants were assigned to AI Mode.
What is changing in Google Search?
Google is adding generated answers to a product that has traditionally helped people find and visit webpages. Two features illustrate the shift, but they work differently: AI Overviews summarize information within Search results, while AI Mode offers a more conversational way to investigate a question.
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| Feature | What it does | How it fits into Search |
|---|---|---|
| AI Overviews | Displays a generated summary in Search results. | A summary feature within the results experience. Google says it launched AI Overviews in 2024. |
| AI Mode | Supports follow-up questions and can break a prompt into subtopics, then run multiple searches—a process Google calls query fan-out. | A conversational search experience. Google announced its U.S. rollout on May 20, 2025, and said some AI Mode capabilities would move into core Search over time. |
That distinction matters for users and site owners. A summary may answer a question before someone opens a result; a conversational session can keep a user within Search for follow-ups that might otherwise have prompted separate searches and visits.
How widely are people using these features?
Google’s reported reach has grown, though the company’s figures are not an independent audit and should not be treated as directly comparable where the stated measures differ.
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- In July 2025, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI Overviews had more than 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories and 40 languages. He also said AI Mode had more than 100 million monthly active users in the United States and India.
- In a June 2026 website-owner update, Google reported over 2.5 billion monthly active users for AI Overviews and over one billion monthly users for AI Mode. The update uses different wording for the two measures, so it does not establish that the figures use identical definitions to each other or to the 2025 figures.
These numbers indicate the scale Google says its AI search features have reached. They do not, by themselves, show whether a particular publisher is gaining or losing visitors.
What does the evidence say about clicks to websites?
There are two important findings, but they answer different questions. Google’s statement describes aggregate traffic trends in its own data; an independent experiment compares behavior under assigned search experiences. Neither supports a universal forecast for every website or query.
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| Evidence | What it found | What it can and cannot establish |
|---|---|---|
| Google’s account, August 6, 2025 | Liz Reid, Google’s VP and Head of Search, wrote that “Overall, total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year.” She also said average click quality had increased, traffic was shifting among sites, and people seeking quick answers may not click further. | This is Google’s description of its aggregate data, not an independently published audit. It does not mean every site or category experienced stable traffic, nor does it settle what happened to clicks on a specific type of result. |
| Preregistered field experiment, 2026 | Stephanie T. Wang, Jeffrey Gleason, Yakov Bart, Christo Wilson, and Danaé Metaxa studied 1,100 participants using Google Search. Participants were assigned to conditions that included standard/current Search, Search with AI features hidden, and searches redirected to AI Mode. The authors report that forced AI Mode reduced external click-through by 18.8 percentage points versus standard Search and lowered trust ratings and several user-experience measures. | This is causal evidence for the assigned experiences and the study population during the experiment—not an estimate of the effect on every publisher, query, or longer-term traffic trend. The authors also report that removing AI Overviews and AI Mode increased publisher click-through compared with the AI-enabled experience. |
The apparent tension is not a contradiction that can be resolved by choosing one number. An experiment that assigns people to use AI Mode tests what happened under that study’s conditions. Google’s year-over-year aggregate statement describes a broader traffic measure that can be affected by many changes, including shifts between sites and differences in what users search for. The results can therefore both be true while leaving the impact on an individual publisher uncertain.
Why will the effect vary from one publisher to another?
Search traffic is not a single outcome. A generated answer may satisfy a quick factual query without a visit, while a user who needs detailed instructions, a local provider, a product page, or supporting evidence may still need to open a site. The balance depends on the query, the search feature shown, the publisher’s content and the period used to measure results.
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- Query type: Questions with a concise answer may be more likely to end on the results page; tasks requiring depth or action can create a stronger reason to visit a source.
- Feature exposure: A page’s performance can differ depending on whether AI Overviews appears, whether someone chooses AI Mode, and how those features evolve.
- Publisher and page: A site’s topic, reputation, usefulness and the specific page surfaced all affect whether a searcher has a reason to click.
- Measurement window: A short experiment, a year-over-year traffic comparison and a site’s own analytics capture different periods and populations.
For those reasons, broad claims that AI Search has either collapsed publisher traffic or improved it across the board go beyond the evidence described here.
How can publishers measure their own exposure?
Google announced generative-AI reporting in Search Console with views for impressions, pages, countries, devices and performance over time. Google said these insights had rolled out worldwide by August 31, 2026. A site owner can use the reports to inspect visibility patterns, but impressions and performance trends alone do not establish downstream clicks, revenue or a causal effect from an AI feature.
For a useful internal comparison, keep the question narrow: which pages and countries are changing, over what period, and in which Search Console measures? Compare like periods and account for other changes to the site or search demand. Treat a change in reported visibility as a signal to investigate—not proof that an AI feature caused a change in visits or business results.
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What should publishers do about Google’s AI search features?
Google Search Central’s May 2026 guidance says traditional SEO best practices remain foundational for generative-AI features. It highlights valuable, distinctive content rather than commodity material, and includes advice relating to local, shopping, image and video content. This is guidance from Google, not a guarantee that a page will be included or cited in an AI-generated response.
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- Make pages useful for the reader’s task, with information or perspective that is not interchangeable with generic summaries.
- Continue applying established SEO practices instead of treating a new label or acronym as a proven shortcut to AI visibility.
- Review Search Console data by page, country, device and time period, then investigate changes against the site’s own goals.
- Do not equate appearances or impressions with visits, trust, revenue or business impact; measure those outcomes separately where possible.
Google’s announcement addresses misconceptions about optimization for generative-AI features. It does not establish “GEO” or “AEO” tactics as guaranteed ranking hacks.
Can a site opt out of AI Overviews or AI Mode?
In its June 2026 website-owner post, Google described testing a Search Console control for opting out of generative-AI Search features. Google said sites that opt out would not receive traffic or impressions from those features, and that the control would not affect ranking outside them. Because the post described a test, it does not establish that the control is available to every site owner now; check Google’s current Search Console documentation and account before relying on it. The stated trade-off is clear: avoiding inclusion in those features also means giving up their associated impressions and traffic.
What this shift means for the open web
Google is making Search less exclusively a gateway to other sites and more of a place where answers and follow-up exploration happen. That changes where information is consumed and creates a real possibility of fewer external clicks in some circumstances, as the 2026 experiment found. It does not prove that all publishers are losing traffic: Google’s aggregate claim points to a different measure, and outcomes vary by query, site and feature. For publishers, the most defensible response is to monitor their own visibility and business outcomes while continuing to produce material with a clear reason for readers to visit.
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