Search Impressions Soar with Google’s AI Overview, Even as Website Clicks Decline

It’s been a year since Google introduced AI Overview to its widely used search engine. The feature significantly transformed how people discovered information online, displaying information summaries above traditional search results. At the time, Google’s Vice President of Search, Liz Reid, proclaimed that AI Overview links would deliver more clicks and “valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”

However, a new study from BrightEdge suggests a more complex picture: while Google’s AI Overview has sent impressions soaring over the past year, click-through rates to websites have dropped.

“The new thing that we’ve seen a year into this is AI has turbocharged Google’s usage,” Jim Yu, the chief executive of the enterprise SEO firm, tells me. He points out that impressions have surprisingly grown by 49 percent. “I think it’s very clear that Google, from a market share perspective, in terms of referral traffic and things like that, continues to be very dominant.” Yu shares that this has “a lot of implications for what it means to us as marketers.”

Impressions Up, CTR Down, But That’s Not All

BrightEdge’s research shows that Google’s AI Overview now appears in over 11 percent of search engine queries, a 22 percent year-over-year increase. In addition, the number of longer, complex queries in AI Overview has grown by 49 percent. That said, click-through rates have steadily declined, dropping nearly 30 percent since May 2024.

In short, it’s excellent news for Google because more people appear to be using AI Overview. The not-so-stellar news is that third-party websites aren’t necessarily benefiting from the traffic. “Big picture, people are engaging with the search engines a lot more, with Google specifically,” Yu emphasizes. “But the number of clicks you can get, in terms of click-through rate, is harder to get from the search engine.”

But that’s only part of the story. Although BrightEdge’s data shows people are engaging with Google search results more and aren’t clicking through to publisher or brand sites, when they do, Yu contends these are more qualified shoppers, visitors, and leads. “Because there’s more engagement happening with the AI experience, by the time they click, that buyer or that shopper is further down the journey and much more qualified,” he remarks. So, it isn’t just that Google benefits the most from AI Overview with greater interactions, “the clicks are much further down the funnel, but much closer to conversion, and much more informed as a buyer.”

This appears to disagree with at least one study that argues against AI-driven clicks being lower quality than organic search.

Moreover, AI Overviews don’t show up equally across all industries. How often they appear in search results can vary widely depending on the sector. BrightEdge’s research finds that healthcare (87 percent in 2025 vs. 72 percent in 2024), education (87 percent vs. 18 percent), business-to-business (B2B) tech (70 percent vs. 36 percent), and insurance (63 percent vs. 17 percent) have the largest presence, with travel (34 percent vs. 0 percent) and entertainment (37 percent vs. 2 percent) on the rise. On the other hand, e-commerce (4 percent vs. 29 percent) has seen a decline. Yu attributes this decrease to Google ramping up usage of its product grids format with e-commerce and shopping queries.

Still, for brands, publishers, and marketers in AI Overview-heavy industries, these summaries have now become a big part of how audiences discover and engage with content online. Yu stresses that these businesses must start thinking differently when measuring marketing performance. “You really have to now look a lot more at impressions than just clicks because now there are so many more impressions and fewer clicks that you need to understand: Are you showing up or are you invisible in the AI?” Yu explains.

For those in emerging industries, he states that businesses can observe what’s happening to their peers, paying attention to how they’re adapting to AI appearing in search engine results and learning how to optimize.

Google Retains AI Search Dominance

When BrightEdge studied Perplexity’s referral traffic growth a year ago, it raised the alarm that Google’s stranglehold over search may finally show some weakness. “There’s momentum,” Yu shared with me at the time. Today, Perplexity isn’t the only AI-powered search engine in the market, meaning Google has to contend with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s AI, and Grok. But despite these newcomers, Google retains strong dominance in search.

There is a chance, however, for its market share percentage—currently estimated at 90 percent—to be reduced, though don’t expect the impact from AI search firms to be so dramatic. Regardless, Yu thinks Google will be OK:

“If you think about it, even if Google goes to 70 percent market share, if it’s growing in terms of its usage, it’s a beast. Just the growth that it has is big relative to all those other ones combined. And, will it stay at 90 percent? I don’t think so.” He brings up the latest challenges facing the company, including Apple’s plan to bundle AI into its Safari browser, describing it as having a “pretty material impact.”

Even so, “if it continues to grow its usage with AI…it’s the [total addressable market] is getting a lot bigger” and Yu contends Google will continue to thrive. “I think their business is underestimated in some ways in the market.”

Next Steps for Marketers to Navigate AI Search

The expanding world of AI search engines is something brands will need to adapt for. Specifically, how do these platforms handle source citations? ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others display them differently, and this lack of uniformity will require content marketers to be more strategic in their work. “The fragmentation is a complex, new frontier,” BrightEdge states. “Brands only have one website, yet must optimize for many AI engines with different rules.”

As this “searchquake” continues, BrightEdge recommends four things to make content compatible with AI Overview: Create content that AI can extract, synthesize, and cite; use structured headings and direct answers; focus on context, clarity, and topical authority; and continuously monitor visibility inside the AI Overview.

Yu says that this is creating a new form of publishing, forcing businesses to establish authority and produce recent and granular content. Although he concedes that it’s a “rapidly evolving space,” there’s no question that companies should shift their thinking to write for AI, not exclusively for the search engines.

Yu urges marketers to redefine their metrics for success to further future-proof their content strategy. How people interact with information, whether on Google or another search engine, is changing. “You have to measure differently because if you’re not showing up in the AI and your competitors are, you lose relevance.”

Before, it was all about clicks and conversions. Those still matter, but now, “you also have to understand impressions, as well as mentions, in addition to citations and links.” To address this, Yu suggests three steps: Develop a new measurement framework to understand AI; make sure marketers understand Google and the other key players; and recognize how optimization is changing—have more robust answering of questions, include structured information, and focus on the metadata, schema, and tags.

You can download the report here (PDF).