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11 hours ago
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Serenity Strull
Your clicks have immense power. Collectively, just moments of our attention can lift or sink a site. But if you're like most people, it seems there's been a change in your behaviour – one that could reshape the internet you know and love.
Over the last year, Google made a tweak. I'm sure you've noticed by now. The first thing you see in search results is often an AI-generated response, instead of the list of blue links that topped Google for decades. Google calls these chatbot answers "AI Overviews". Sometimes they're incredibly useful. Other times they literally tell people to eat rocks and glue in a moment of hallucination. Apparently, AI Overviews also influence what you do next.
This year, 900 web-surfing Americans gave the Pew Research Center permission to spy on their browsing. "These users were less likely to click a link when they did a search that produced an AI summary – and also more likely to end their browsing session entirely," says Aaron Smith, director of Data Labs at Pew. According to a new analysis, Google searchers were almost two times less likely to click on links to other sites when they saw AI Overviews. And 26% of the time, they just closed their browser.
A huge portion of websites make their money through advertising, particularly sites that provide information and content rather than sell things. It's an ecosystem that lives and dies on the size of the audience, and the whims of Google's algorithm can basically shut your company down overnight.
"Most websites require that Google traffic to keep the lights on," says Lily Ray, vice president of search engine optimisation strategy and research at the marketing agency Amsive. "But AI Overviews are cutting into traffic so dramatically that many sites are seeing 20%, 30%, even 40% declines in their revenue. It's having a devastating impact, and removing the incentive for a lot of people to create high-quality content."
This could be a preview of things to come, because Google just launched a feature called AI Mode that gets rid of traditional search results entirely. Ray and a long list of experts say the outcome will be cataclysmic. Some fear it may destroy the web as we know it.
Getty Images
Experts say the logic is simple. When AI gives you the answer, why click on a link? If that's how things play out, your favourite site could be in trouble (Credit: Getty Images)
Google, however, says that's all nonsense. "We consistently direct billions of clicks to websites daily and have not observed significant drops in aggregate web traffic as is being suggested," a spokesperson for the company says. "This study uses a flawed methodology and skewed query set that is not representative of Search traffic."
Pew says it's confident in its research. "Our findings are broadly consistent with independent studies conducted by web analytics firms," Smith says. Dozens of reports show AI Overviews cut search traffic as much as 30% to 70% depending on what people are Googling. Ray says she's personally seen this in data from hundreds of websites.
But Google tells the BBC you should disregard this, because it's bad research, biased data and meaningless anecdotes. The company says web traffic fluctuates for many reasons, and AI Overviews link to a wider variety of sources and create new ways to discover websites. Google's spokesperson says the clicks from AI answers are also higher quality because people spend more time on the sites they visit.
Ironically, Google's own AI disagrees with its PR department. If you ask Google Gemini, it says AI Overviews hurt websites. And according to Ray, the evidence is clear. "Google is trying to spin information and hide the truth because people will freak out," she says. The company says it's committed to transparency.
There's another question though. Is this just what we all want? That's what Google thinks, at least. "People are gravitating to AI-powered experiences, and AI features in Search enable people to ask even more questions, creating new opportunities for people to connect with websites," Google's spokesperson says.
But Ray says that's missing the point. "Google can say, 'Oh well, nobody wants to click anymore,' but they're benefiting from the hard work everyone else is doing. They're taking the clicks away from the people who created the content Google's AI pulled from in the first place," she says. Forget the websites, though, Ray says AI's propensity to hallucinate means it's worse for you, too.
"AI Overviews often get things egregiously wrong," she says. "Not only is it stealing traffic from sites, it's almost like robbing the user of their ability to parse through different information, choose what they want to read and come to their own conclusions." Google says AI Search responses are useful and overwhelmingly factual, with accuracy on par with other Search features.
Maybe that's just the trade we're all making. A little more convenience, a little less friction and, perhaps, a little less choice. But if Google is wrong, and websites start to go dark, it won't be because we clicked the wrong link. It'll be because we stopped clicking at all.
