Is Google's AI Overview Stealing My Website Traffic?

Visits from Google are down, but your rankings look about the same. Then you search one of your own topics and see why it might be happening: Google answers the question itself in a box at the top of the page, before anyone reaches your link.

That box is an AI Overview, and it's a fair thing to worry about. You can't switch it off for other people, but you can find out whether it's really what's costing you clicks, and decide what to do about it.

The quick answer

1. Open Search Console's Performance report and compare clicks with impressions. If impressions held steady while clicks fell, on question-style searches especially, AI Overviews are a likely cause.
2. Open the Generative AI performance report in Search Console to see which of your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.
3. Don't block Google to fight it. That removes you from regular search results too.
4. Measure calls and form fills, not just visits. Some lost visits were people who only wanted a quick fact, never customers.

What the research says (briefly)

Two sources, and they don't agree:

• Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. When a Google search showed an AI summary, people clicked a regular result link on 8% of visits, against 15% when there was no summary. Links inside the summary itself were clicked on about 1% of visits.
• Google says in its AI features documentation that when people click from results pages with AI Overviews, "these clicks are higher quality (meaning, users are more likely to spend more time on the site)."

Both can be true at once: fewer clicks overall, with the people who do click being more interested. Which one matters more depends on what your pages are for.

How to tell if AI Overviews are behind your drop

Step 1: Compare clicks and impressions in Search Console

In Search Console, open Performance > Search results. Turn on Total clicks, Total impressions and Average CTR (the share of impressions that became clicks). Set the date range to compare the last three months with the same three months a year ago, so seasonal swings don't fool you.

Look at the Queries tab and sort by the change in clicks:

• Impressions steady or up, clicks down, CTR down: people still see your link but click less. That's the pattern AI Overviews produce.
• Impressions down too: you're being shown less. That points to rankings, a site problem or seasonality, not mainly AI Overviews.

Google's help page for the report explains how AI Overviews count: a click on a link inside an AI Overview counts as a click, and the whole Overview takes a single position in the results. Google's AI features page adds that this traffic is reported within the normal Web search type, so it's already in the numbers you're looking at.

Step 2: Open the Generative AI performance report

Google rolled out a separate Generative AI performance report to all sites on August 31, 2026. It shows how often links to your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and you can break that down by page, country, device and date.

Two things to know:

• It shows impressions only. To see clicks, go back to the main Performance report.
• Google's launch post says this data is also still included in the overall Performance report. Don't add the two together.

If the report says there isn't enough data, your pages haven't shown up much in AI features yet, or the site has been excluded (see below).

Step 3: Check the pages that matter for business

Not every lost visit was a lost customer. A page answering "what is a DNS record" mostly draws curious readers. A page for "IT support for small business in Augusta" draws buyers. In Google Analytics, check whether calls, contact form submissions or bookings fell along with visits. If leads held steady, the clicks you lost were mostly readers who got their answer and left.

Rule out the other usual suspects

AI Overviews get the blame for a lot of drops they didn't cause. Before deciding, check:

• Tracking: did your analytics code fall off during a website update?
• Indexing: in Search Console, Indexing > Pages, did important pages drop out of Google's index?
• Speed and mobile problems: see Is My Slow Website Hurting My Google Rankings?
• Seasonality: compare with the same months last year, not last month.

What you can control, and why you probably shouldn't use it

Google gives site owners two ways to keep content out of AI Overviews:

• The Search generative AI control in Search Console (Settings > Search generative AI). Google's help page says excluding your site means "You won't receive any traffic or impressions from these features," and that content from other sites "may appear similar to yours."
• The `nosnippet` tag, which Google's robots meta tag documentation says applies to "all forms of search results," including AI Overviews and AI Mode. It also removes the text preview under your link in regular results, which can cost clicks there too.

For most small businesses neither is worth it. The AI Overview still appears for that search either way. The only question is whether your business is one of the links in it. We cover the separate question of AI companies' own bots in Should My Small Business Block AI Bots From Its Website?

What to do instead

• Make your pages easy to cite. Google says there are no special requirements for AI Overviews: a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and normal SEO practice applies. Answer the question clearly near the top, in plain words.
• Put effort into pages that lead to a job, not just a fact. "How do I reset my router" is easy for an AI to answer. "Who can fix our office network this week" ends with someone choosing a business.
• Keep your Google Business Profile complete. Google's AI features documentation lists checking that "Business Profile information is up-to-date" among its SEO basics.
• Judge success by leads. Fewer visits with the same number of calls isn't a loss.

Keeping an eye on it

• Once a month, glance at clicks, impressions and CTR in Search Console, plus the Generative AI report.
• Track calls and form submissions somewhere simple, even a spreadsheet, so you can tell a traffic dip from a business dip.
• Note when you change the website, so you can line up any drop with what changed.

When to call someone

• Traffic and leads fell, and you can't find the cause.
• Pages are dropping out of Google's index, or Search Console shows errors you don't understand.
• You want help working out which pages to rewrite so they're the ones being cited.

If that's you, get in touch and we'll go through the numbers with you.

Related reading

• Should My Small Business Block AI Bots From Its Website?
• ChatGPT or Google AI Doesn't Mention My Business: What to Check
• Google Search Console for Small Business: Find Out Why You're Not on Google