1% click-through rate: How Google AI Overviews is killing publishers

Users are less likely to click on search result links when an AI-generated summary is presented, according to new data from Pew Research Centre. 

 

According to the report, which surveyed 900 US adults in March 2025, users click on links within the AI summary itself only 1% of the time and the click-through rate on search result links declines heavily when AI-generated summary is present. 

 

Without an AI summary, the click-through rate is 15%; whereas with one, it drops down to 8%. Browsing sessions are also more likely to end after seeing an AI summary (26%) compared to without (16%).

 

 

AI summaries are becoming more common with 58% of participants stating they’ve encountered at least one. Three-fifths (60%) of searches beginning with ‘who’, ‘when’, or ‘why’, generated a summary and so did prompts that used questions, full sentences, or longer phrases. 

 

Just over half (53%) of searches with 10 or more words produced AI summaries, while only 8% of one or two-word searches did. By March 2025, 18% of all Google searches had generated an AI summary. 

 

Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit accounted for 15-17% of the links across both AI summaries and regular results, while news websites appeared equally in both formats (5%). 

 

Pushback from publishers

 

In July, Google officially launched AI-generated summaries in the discover feed within its smartphone search app (iOS and Android) for users in the US. Instead of headlines, users now see AI-generated summaries accompanied by small publisher logos linking to source sites. 

 

A disclaimer reads: “Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.”

 

There has been no official launch date for Asia Pacific set yet. Publishers fear a further decline in traffic due to zero-click searches, when users get their answer from the summary.

 

Entertainment news publishers like Giant Freakin Robot have been significantly impacted by AI overviews. In November last year, the independent publisher had to announce it is shutting down, nearly six months after Google launched AI Overviews, due to a drastic drop in search traffic.

 

At the start of this month, a group of independent publishers filed a formal antitrust complaint against Google with the European Commission, targeting its AI Overviews feature. The complaint included a request for interim measures to prevent what publishers described as “irreparable harm”.

 

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has also received the complaint. Co-signers include The Independent Publishers Alliance, Foxglove Legal (a UK non-profit advocating tech fairness), and Movement for an Open Web. 

 

Benjamin Lanfry, chief supply and operations officer at Ogury, told Performance Marketing World: “The open web is pushing back. From antitrust complaints against AI Overviews to technical defenses like Cloudflare’s new crawler controls, publishers are drawing a clear line: unchecked AI scraping and value extraction won't go unchallenged.

 

“And it’s not just publishers—privacy regulators are stepping in too. France’s CNIL [Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés], for instance, just clarified that legitimate interest is not a blank check for training AI on personal data.

 

“Together, these signals point to a growing consensus: this isn’t about resisting innovation – it’s about demanding sustainability, transparency, and a future where both independent content and individual rights are protected. The stakes now go beyond traffic and revenue – they touch on the very infrastructure of digital trust.”

 

However, Google defended itself by arguing that it sends billions of clicks to websites daily and creates “new opportunities” for discovery via AI experiences. The company claims traffic data is often misrepresented and affected by many factors, like seasonal trends or algorithm updates.

 

A Google spokesperson said: “New AI experiences in search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered.

 

“The reality is that sites can gain and lose traffic for a variety of reasons, including seasonal demand, interests of users, and regular algorithmic updates to search.”

 

What’s next? 

 

As tensions between AI firms and publishers continue to rise, Google is reportedly working on a solution, talking with about 20 national news outlets to license content for its AI tools. This would be part of a pilot project aimed at developing AI-related partnerships with media companies.

 

The move resembles strategies by OpenAI (which has deals with Condé Nast, Vox, The Atlantic, and News Corp) and Perplexity (the second most active in licensing deals).

 

Amazon also recently signed a licensing deal with Condé Nast and Hearst to allow its AI shopping assistant, Rufus, to scrape content from its publications.

 

Google already has a partnership with the Associated Press for real-time news updates via its Gemini model and a $60m licensing deal with Reddit.