Google’s AI Overviews have moved from an experiment to a default part of the results page, and the cost is landing on the sites that feed them. The summaries answer the question at the top of the page, and a growing share of searches now end without anyone clicking through. For affiliate and review publishers, whose traffic depends on those clicks, the shift is one of the most important stories in search right now.
How big is the traffic hit
The numbers are stark, even if they vary by study. Pew Research Center, tracking 68,000 real searches, found users clicked a result just 8% of the time when an AI summary was present, against 15% without one. Ahrefs measured a 34.5% average drop in click-through rate for top-ranking pages, rising to roughly 64% for the number one spot on informational queries. Similarweb put the share of searches that end without a click at somewhere between 58% and 69%, up sharply year over year. In one extreme case, DMG Media reported desktop click-through rates falling from about 25% to under 3% on pages where an AI Overview appeared.
How common AI Overviews have become
This is no longer a fringe feature. AI Overviews show on roughly 20% of Google searches, ranging from about 19% in the UK to 37% in some markets, and Google says the feature reaches around 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and 40 languages. When a surface that large answers questions inline, the downstream effect on referral traffic is structural, not seasonal.
The exception: branded queries still win
Not every result loses. Research from Amsive found an 18% increase in click-through rate for branded queries that also showed an AI Overview, and analysts note that being cited inside an Overview can lift a page’s clicks. In other words, the feature rewards known brands and trusted sources while squeezing generic, undifferentiated pages. The catch, per Authoritas, is that citations are volatile: around 70% of cited pages changed over a two to three month window, and those changes did not track traditional rankings.
Why affiliate and review sites feel it most
AI Overviews trigger most often on informational queries, the “what is the best” and “how do I choose” searches that comparison, review and affiliate tools are built to answer. That is exactly the content a summary can paraphrase. A thin roundup that only restates specs has little defense, because the Overview can restate those specs too. The pages that hold up are the ones offering something a summary cannot manufacture: first-hand testing, real opinions, and data the model does not already have.
What publishers can do
There is no single fix, but the direction is clear. Build a direct relationship with your audience through email, so a slice of your traffic does not depend on Google at all. Invest in brand, because branded search is the one place click-through is rising. Publish content an Overview cannot replace: original reviews, tests, and analysis rather than restated facts. And structure pages to be citable, since an Overview citation is now a meaningful traffic source in its own right. None of this reverses the trend, but it moves your site toward the side of it that still earns clicks.
The bottom line
AI Overviews are not a temporary dip in the data. They change the deal between Google and the publishers that supply its answers, and they reward originality and brand over commodity content. For affiliate publishers, the takeaway is uncomfortable but useful: the sites that win from here will be the ones a machine cannot summarize away.
Sources: Search Engine Journal and SeoProfy, citing studies by Pew Research, Ahrefs, Similarweb, Amsive and Authoritas.
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