Google AI Summaries Cut Website Visits by Up to 89%

Google’s AI-powered answers are changing how users move from search results to websites, with visits reportedly falling by as much as 89% as readers get ready-made summaries directly from the search engine.

The shift allows users to find an answer without necessarily opening a page from the results. Rather than following a link to read the underlying material, they can rely on the summary displayed by Google.

For website publishers, that creates a challenge: information can help answer a search query without bringing the reader to the site that published it. The concern is whether visibility in search still translates into visits.

The brief accompanying the reported figure does not specify which websites were affected, the period measured or how the decline was calculated. The “up to 89%” figure should therefore not be read as a uniform drop across all websites.