Does AI Search Mean Fewer Clicks to Your Website? What Two Studies Show

Published 7 September 2026

Are AI answers in Google search sending fewer visitors to business websites? Two studies, one from Pew Research Center and one new academic preprint, point that way, with some important limits.

Pew analyzed the browsing activity of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. Users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits, compared with 15% of visits for users who did not see one.

A preprint posted to arXiv in August 2026 by Wang, Gleason, Bart, Wilson and Metaxa went further. It was a preregistered experiment with 1,100 people using Google Search. Participants who were assigned to AI Mode for seven days had an external click-through rate 18.8 percentage points lower than those using standard Google Search.

Both studies have limits. The experiment was short and forced people into AI Mode, and the paper is a preprint. Pew measured one month of browsing. Neither study can tell you exactly what your own site will see, so the practical message is to measure before reacting.

This matters because many small business websites depend on search for new visitors. If more searchers get an answer without clicking, ranking well may bring less traffic than it used to. Your own analytics will show whether that is happening to you and which pages still earn clicks.

At Zamorins Solutions we build websites and run digital marketing for business, and we focus on content that answers real customer questions clearly.

What you can do this week

• Compare your search visits for the last three months with the same period last year.
• List your five top landing pages and check that each one answers a specific question clearly.
• Add one way to reach customers that does not depend on search, such as an email list or a referral partner.

Takeaway: Studies suggest AI answers in search can reduce clicks, so measure your own traffic and build ways to reach customers beyond a single search page.

Sources

• Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results, Pew Research Center (July 22, 2025)
• AI in Search Reduces Publisher Referrals Without Improving User Experience: Experimental Evidence, Wang, Gleason, Bart, Wilson and Metaxa, arXiv preprint (August 18, 2026)