Artificial Intelligence

Study: Google AI Overviews Cut News Site Audiences

Published JUL 25 2025

Story

Above: Google LLC's logo displayed on a smartphone on April 20, 2025. Image credit: Cheng Xin/Getty Images

The Facts

Exclusive research by analytics firm Authoritas for The Guardian has found that websites previously ranked first in search results could lose approximately 79% of their traffic when results appear below a Google AI summary.
TechJuice
The Guardian
Authoritas also found that links to YouTube, which is also owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, were more prominent than a non-AI summary system.
The Guardian
SEC
Alphabet Investor Relations
The MailOnline has also independently reported click-through rate drops of 56.1% on desktop and 48.2% on mobile when AI summaries appeared for search terms where the site ranked first organically.
The Guardian
Press Gazette
This comes as the Tech justice group Foxglove, the Independent Publishers Alliance, and the Movement for an Open Web have submitted a legal complaint with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority regarding the impact of Google AI summaries, with the study's results being submitted as part of the filing.
The Guardian
FoxGlove
This week, a Pew Research Center study analyzing 68,879 Google searches from 900 U.S. adults also found users clicked on links under AI summaries only 8% of the time, compared to 15% click-through rates on pages without AI summaries.
Pew Research Center
Google has disputed the studies' findings, stating they used flawed methodology and unrepresentative search queries, while claiming AI features create new opportunities and generate billions of daily clicks for websites.
TechJuice
The Guardian

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The Spin

Techno-optimist narrative

Google's AI Overviews represent a natural evolution of search technology that benefits users by providing quick, comprehensive answers without forcing them to navigate multiple websites. The feature increases overall search satisfaction and encourages more queries, creating expanded opportunities for publishers to reach audiences through diverse pathways.

Google

Techno-skeptic narrative

Google's AI Overviews prioritize convenience over accuracy, reducing website clicks by half while boosting Google's profits. These summaries hallucinate absurd advice and fake quotes, yet users increasingly accept them without verification. With extremely high error rates in some systems, we're witnessing truth's commoditization where speed trumps accuracy and human expertise.

TechRadar

Ars Technica