# Study: Google AI Overviews cut publisher clicks nearly 40%

Published: 2026-09-18T18:04:33.696Z · Source: Digital Content Next (https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2026/09/15/research-casts-doubt-on-ai-search-value-for-sites-and-searchers/)
Source date: 2026-09-15
Entities: ai-overviews, google

A field experiment by Saharsh Agarwal (Indian School of Business) and Ananya Sen (Carnegie Mellon) randomly assigned 1,065 U.S. desktop searchers to see Google results with or without AI Overviews over two weeks in early 2026. Removing the AI Overview raised outbound clicks to external sites from 0.37 to 0.62 per search — a nearly 40% reduction when the AI Overview is present — while self-reported search satisfaction held flat at 4.0 out of 5 either way, per Digital Content Next's write-up of the paper, first posted to SSRN in April 2026 and revised in June. Citations inside AI Overviews recovered little of the lost traffic: just 7.1% of outbound clicks on AIO-bearing search pages came from links inside the AI-generated answer itself, with the rest going to ordinary organic results on the same page.

Why it matters: It is the first randomized field experiment — not another observational study — testing Google's own claims about AI Overviews, and it contradicts all three: no traffic-quality gain, no satisfaction gain, and citations that recover only a sliver of the clicks lost.

## What this answers

**Do Google AI Overviews reduce clicks to websites?**

Yes — a randomized field experiment with 1,065 U.S. searchers found removing the AI Overview raised outbound clicks per search from 0.37 to 0.62, a reduction of nearly 40% when the AI Overview is present, per researchers Saharsh Agarwal and Ananya Sen.

**Do AI Overview citations make up for the traffic they take from websites?**

Barely — only 7.1% of outbound clicks on search pages with an AI Overview came from links inside the AI-generated answer itself; the rest came from ordinary organic results on the same page.


Canonical: https://anythingengineoptimization.com/item/2026-09-18-study-google-ai-overviews-cut-publisher-clicks-nearly-40/
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