Did Google's AI Overviews cut your website traffic? How to check, and what to do

Why this question is hard to answer

AI Overviews are the summaries Google shows above the normal results for some searches. AI Mode is the separate chat-style search tab. Both include links to websites, and both can answer a question well enough that the person never clicks anywhere.

The trouble is that Search Console doesn't give you a clean "lost to AI" number. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are mixed into your normal Web clicks, and Google's help page on impressions, position and clicks explains that an AI Overview takes up a single position on the results page: every link inside it gets that same position. So you have to work it out from patterns, the same way you would for any other drop.

Step 1: Look at a long enough time range

Open Search Console, go to Performance, then Search results. Set the date range to the last 16 months, the longest Search Console keeps. Google's own guide to debugging drops in Search traffic recommends starting here, because a long view shows whether the drop is sudden, gradual or the same dip you get every year.

Then switch on all four metrics: total clicks, total impressions, average CTR (the share of impressions that became clicks) and average position.

Step 2: Compare the right periods

Use the Compare tab in the date filter. Google suggests comparing the last 3 months with the 3 months before, or with the same period a year earlier if your business is seasonal. A shop selling garden furniture shouldn't compare November with June.

Step 3: Read the pattern

This is the step that tells you most. Look at what moved together:

Google's guide says the first row in plain words: if impressions stay about the same but clicks drop, something is changing how people react to your result, either your snippet or other results on the page. AI Overviews are one possible cause on that row, not the only one.

Before you read too much into any change, check Google's data anomalies in Search Console page. Sometimes a dip is a logging problem on Google's side, not real traffic.

Step 4: Open the Generative AI report

Go to Performance and choose Generative AI. Google's help page for this report explains that it shows how often your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country, device and date. It combines both features and you can't separate them.

It shows impressions only. That makes it useful as a second signal: if a page's AI impressions grew over the same months its clicks fell while its normal impressions held, AI Overviews are a likely part of the story for that page. If a page has almost no AI impressions, look elsewhere for the cause.

Step 5: Check which of your queries are questions

Pew found that AI summaries appeared in 18% of the searches it tracked, but in 60% of searches that started with a question word such as "how", "what" or "why". Length mattered too: 8% of one- or two-word searches got a summary, against 53% of searches with ten or more words.

So in the Queries tab, sort by clicks lost and look at the queries at the top. If they're mostly long questions ("how long does a sofa take to deliver"), AI Overviews are a reasonable suspect. If they're short product or brand searches ("oak sofa lisbon"), they're less likely to be the cause.

Then search a few of those queries yourself, ideally in a private window. Results change by person, place and day, so treat this as a spot check, not proof.

Step 6: Rule out the usual causes

Before you settle on AI Overviews, check the boring things too:

1. Updates. Compare the date of your drop with the updates listed on the Google Search Status Dashboard.
2. Indexing. Open the Pages report under Indexing and look for pages that dropped out.
3. Crawling. Make sure your robots.txt doesn't block Googlebot. Our guide on checking which crawlers can access your site shows how to test this.
4. Demand. Look up your main queries in Google Trends. If interest in your product fell, your traffic will follow.

What to do if AI Overviews are the cause

Measure what the clicks are worth, not just how many

Google claims clicks from pages with AI Overviews are "higher quality", meaning people are more likely to spend time on the site. That's Google's claim, so test it on your own data. Set up conversions in GA4 and compare sales or leads, not just sessions. Our guide to tracking AI traffic and sales in GA4 covers the setup.

Give people a reason to click

An AI summary can answer "what is the return window for sofas". It's much worse at replacing a size guide with photos, a calculator, real customer reviews or a clear price comparison. Google's August 2025 post says people are clicking more on forums, videos and posts with first-hand experience. Pages built around something only you have hold up better than pages that repeat what everyone else says.

Try to be one of the sources in the summary

Your page can be one of the links inside an AI Overview. Google's page on AI features and your website says no special markup or file is needed: the page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and the usual SEO basics apply. Clear, direct answers near the top of the page, accurate facts and a page that loads properly all help. Our checklist for getting cited by ChatGPT covers the same ground for other AI assistants.

Don't rewrite everything at once

If position held and only clicks dropped, your content isn't necessarily the problem. Change a few pages, give it a few weeks, and compare. Big rewrites make it impossible to tell what worked.

Should you opt out of AI Overviews?

You can. Since 31 August 2026 Search Console has a Search generative AI setting that lets a site exclude itself from AI features in Google Search. Google's help page for that setting says excluding your site removes the impressions and traffic you'd get from those features, isn't used as a ranking signal and doesn't affect AI training. There are also older, page-level controls such as nosnippet.

For most small businesses we don't recommend it. Opting out doesn't bring back the people who were happy with the summary; it only takes your links out of it. Opting out makes most sense if your business depends on content that AI summaries give away completely, and even then, test it on part of the site first if you can.

One common mix-up: blocking Google-Extended in robots.txt does not remove you from AI Overviews. Google's crawler documentation says it controls training and grounding for Gemini Apps and Vertex AI and doesn't affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search.

What the studies say, side by side

These don't fully contradict each other. The studies measure clicks per search for searches with a summary. Google reports total clicks across all searches. Both can be true at once, and it means some sites lose while others gain.

Check your own site

If your clicks are falling, start with the basics AI and Google both need: pages they can crawl, clear answers and clean structured data. Run the free Web2Agents AI check to see what AI crawlers can read on your site, or get the €19 AI-Ready Kit for ready-made files and fixes. More guides are in our GEO and AI search visibility section.