In short
What Google's AI Overviews are, what the click research shows, which small business searches are affected and what to do about it.
Yes, on some searches. Pew Research Center's 2025 study of 900 US adults found people clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits when Google showed an AI summary, compared with 15% when it didn't. But in the same study, two-word searches like a service and a town showed AI summaries far less than long questions did. Protecting your business takes the same work that wins in normal search, plus making your business easy for AI to describe.
So the picture is more mixed than the headlines suggest. Here's what AI Overviews are, what the research shows, which of your searches are exposed and what to do about it.
What are Google's AI Overviews?
They're the AI-written summaries that appear at the top of some Google results, above the usual list of websites. Each one sums up an answer and links out to sources for further reading. Google also offers AI Mode, which gives an AI-written response with links for questions that need more exploration or comparison.
They don't appear on every search. Google's Search Central documentation, AI features and your website, last updated in December 2025, says "AI Overviews are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search." In plain terms, Google decides search by search whether a summary adds anything, and if it doesn't, there's no summary.
What does the research say about clicks?
Independent figures come from a Pew Research Center study published in July 2025. Pew analysed the browsing data of 900 US adults during March 2025. In that month, 18% of the Google searches in the study produced an AI summary.
When a summary appeared, people clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits. Without one, they clicked in 15% of visits, nearly twice the rate. They clicked a link inside the AI summary itself in just 1% of visits. And people ended their browsing session entirely on 26% of pages with an AI summary, against 16% of pages with only traditional results.
Two things to keep in mind. This is US data, not UK data, and it was collected in March 2025, so it's a snapshot of one month. What it does show clearly is how people behave on a page where an AI summary sits above the links.
What does Google say?
Google disagrees with the idea that AI is draining traffic from the web. In an August 2025 post on Google's official blog, its Head of Search wrote that "total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year." The post also says Google is sending slightly more quality clicks than a year earlier, meaning clicks where people don't quickly come back to the results, and it calls third-party reports of dramatic declines in overall traffic inaccurate.
The two findings measure different things. Pew looked at what individual people did on pages that showed a summary. Google is talking about total clicks across all searches. Both can be true at once: fewer clicks on searches with an AI Overview, while overall traffic to websites holds steady.
Which of your searches are affected?
This is the part that matters most for a small business. In Pew's study, just 8% of one- or two-word searches produced an AI summary, compared with 53% of searches of ten words or more. Searches starting with a question word such as "who", "what", "when" or "why" produced one 60% of the time.
So the long, information-seeking searches are the most exposed. A question like "why is my boiler losing pressure" or "what's the difference between a will and a trust" is exactly the kind of search that produced AI summaries most in Pew's data. Someone searching "plumber Perth" or "solicitor Dundee" is doing something different: they're choosing who to contact.
That changes how you should look at your own traffic. If your blog has been pulling in visitors with how-to articles, some of those visitors now get their answer on Google itself. The short searches from people choosing who to contact are where your enquiries come from, and in Pew's data one- and two-word searches were the least likely to show an AI summary.
What should a small business do about it?
Start with what Google tells site owners. Its documentation says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisation needed. The same good SEO practice applies: let Google crawl your site, link your pages together clearly, put important content in text rather than images, make sure structured data matches what's on the page and keep your Business Profile up to date.
That's the SEO side. The GEO side, short for generative engine optimisation, is about being the business an AI tool names when someone asks for a recommendation, in Google's AI Overviews and in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. For a small business that means service pages that answer customers' questions in plain words, schema that states your name, services and areas, matching prices and contact details on every listing, and reviews on trusted sites that back up what your website says.
None of this replaces SEO. The same work helps you rank on Google and get named in AI answers, which is why we run SEO and GEO together.
How do you know if it's affecting you?
Look at enquiries, not just visits. If your traffic has dipped on informational pages but calls and forms from your service pages are steady, you've lost browsers, not buyers. Google's documentation says traffic from AI features is included in the Performance report in Search Console, under the "Web" search type, so you can see it alongside the rest of your search traffic.
For AI answers themselves, you have to check directly. We ask the questions your customers ask, note whether you're named and how you're described, see which competitors turn up instead and track how many visitors reach your site from AI tools. If you'd like that done once, our standalone Google AI Overviews and AI search visibility audits show where you stand and what to fix first, with no ongoing contract. If you'd rather have the work done every day, SEO and GEO are part of the DLR Growth Engine at £1,499 a month + VAT, along with Google Ads, Meta Ads and a free custom website.
Frequently asked questions
Can I stop Google using my site in AI Overviews?
Yes. Google's documentation lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex as the controls that limit the information shown from your pages in Search. They cover Search as a whole, not only AI features, so using them to stay out of AI Overviews also cuts back how you appear in normal results.
Do I need special markup or an llms.txt file to appear in AI Overviews?
No. Google's documentation says there are no additional requirements or special optimisations for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Our guide to llms.txt explains where that file does fit.
Should I stop writing how-to articles?
No, but judge them on enquiries rather than visits. A how-to page that answers what customers ask before they buy gives Google and AI tools clear content to draw on, and it should link straight to the service page that brings in the work.
Can you guarantee my business appears in an AI Overview?
No. Google decides when to show an AI Overview and which sources to include. We make your pages the clearest answer available and report on whether you're being cited.
Talk to us about your search traffic
If your traffic has changed and you want to know why, call us on +44 1382 699595 and we'll look at which of your searches are affected and what to do next.
