Zyppy opt-out test estimates AI Overviews and AI Mode drove 21% of one site's clicks

SEO consultant Cyrus Shepard opted his Zyppy site out of Google’s AI features using Search Console’s generative AI control from Sept. 1 to Sept. 29, then opted back in for another 28 days, and published the results Nov. 5. AI Overviews and AI Mode accounted for about 10% of the site’s Google search impressions, and he estimates a click-through rate of about 0.9% on them (range 0.7%-1.1%), against about 0.4% for the site overall. That works out to about 21% of the site’s search clicks, or 23% once he adds a small lift he attributes to AI visibility on regular listings (a “halo effect”).

The clicks are inferred, not measured: Search Console counts AI-feature clicks inside its standard totals and does not separate them, so Shepard compared total clicks between the two periods, which ran back to back, and checked the result against matched-query and position analyses. This is the full write-up behind the single-site test the wire logged Oct. 30 from a Search Engine Roundtable pickup of his LinkedIn post. Shepard calls it a single experiment on a single site, “more as a directional yardstick than Google gospel,” and says the site has been optimized to win AI citations, which may explain the high share. He also reports the site vanished from AI features within an hour, while per Search Engine Journal Google’s help center says exclusions generally take several days. SEJ adds that the UK Competition and Markets Authority has given Google until Dec. 3 to give publishers impressions, clicks and click-through rate for AI features, the clicks and CTR figures Shepard had to estimate.