AI Overviews are taking clicks, but your website can still win deals

AI answers are changing the path from a search to a website visit. Google launched AI Mode in Swedish (opens in a new tab) on 8 October 2025, and both AI Mode and AI Overviews can answer questions directly on the results page.

Fewer visits do not necessarily mean fewer deals. Track how search traffic, qualified inquiries and sales change together. That makes it easier to decide which pages to improve and where your effort will count most.

AI Overviews and AI Mode: what has changed on Google

Google now shows two kinds of AI answers. The AI Overview is a summary at the top of the ordinary results. AI Mode (opens in a new tab) is a separate tab where Google breaks the question into sub-questions, searches for them in parallel and writes a longer answer with links.

Swedes have taken to both. According to Swedes and the Internet 2026 (opens in a new tab) (in Swedish) from the Swedish Internet Foundation, seven in ten Swedes have used Google's AI Overviews. Just over six in ten use AI services, up from four in ten the year before, and one in seven says they google less often than a year ago. Among AI users who google less, seven in ten name AI services as the reason.

What the numbers say about clicks

Two studies give the clearest picture, both from the US:

• Pew Research followed the actual browsing of 900 people. When an AI summary appeared, they clicked a regular search result in 8 percent of visits, compared with 15 percent when there was none (opens in a new tab). A link inside the summary itself was clicked in 1 percent of cases.

• A randomised field experiment by the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon hid AI Overviews from some of its 1,065 participants. Where the overviews appeared, there were almost 40 percent fewer organic clicks (opens in a new tab), and searches with no click at all became just over 34 percent more common. The study is a working paper that has not yet been peer reviewed.

The studies describe changes in click behaviour within the groups they examined. To see what that means for your company, look at changes in clicks alongside your own inquiries and sales.

Fewer clicks is not the same as fewer deals

Searches can play different roles in a customer journey. An informational page may introduce someone to a company, while a service page helps them compare options and take the next step. So judge the value of that traffic against your own business.

Compare changes in key landing pages and search queries with qualified inquiries, bookings and deals. Falling traffic with steady inquiries is a different situation from a decline in both. Understanding that difference helps you decide what to improve.

What works and what you don't need

There is plenty of advice about "GEO" and "AEO", new acronyms for optimising for AI answers. Google's own documentation (opens in a new tab) is clearer: there are no special requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. No new AI files, no special markup. The page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet in search results, and otherwise follow standard SEO best practice.

What actually makes a difference:

• Pages that answer buying questions: prices, set-up, comparisons and examples. That is the kind of content a short AI answer does not replace.

• Clear facts in the text: what the company does, for whom, where and at what price. It helps both Google and AI services describe the page correctly.

• A next step on every page: contact, booking or quote, visible without searching.

• The brand as a search term: people who read about a company in an AI answer may search for its name afterwards. Those searches are worth tracking.

Measure the right thing: from visits to inquiries

Since 2026, Search Console has shown impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode in a separate report, but not clicks or queries, according to Google (opens in a new tab). Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are part of the ordinary web figures. So there is no direct answer to the question "how much are we losing to AI?" But you can track what matters:

• Inquiries from organic search per month, linked to the CRM so it is clear which ones become deals.

• Impressions, clicks and average position for each query in Search Console. A falling click-through rate can have several causes. Also compare rankings, the layout of the results page and the types of queries that have changed.

• Branded searches over time.

• Conversion per landing page: which pages get visitors to make contact.

With those measures in place, fewer clicks become a number to understand rather than a number to worry about.

Website checklist

1. Compare the last twelve months in Search Console: which queries have more impressions but fewer clicks?

2. Split the queries into informational and buying questions. Put the effort into the buying questions.

3. Review the ten most important pages: do they have prices, examples and a clear next step?

4. Check the basics: indexing, load time, internal links and structured data that matches the text.

5. Connect forms and bookings to analytics and the CRM, so every inquiry has a source.

6. Make inquiries and deals from search the main metric in your reporting, not visits.

How we work

When we build and improve websites, we start with the numbers, not the design:

• Current state: we read Search Console, analytics and the CRM together to see which searches and pages bring in business.

• Content worth the click: pages for buying questions, with prices, examples and a clear next step.

• Technical foundation: fast pages, correct indexing and structured data, without shortcuts.

• Reliable measurement: reports that show inquiries and deals from search, not just visits.

The goal is a website that brings more customers even as Google answers more questions itself.