Google’s AI Overviews cost clicks on questions, hardly any on offers

Type a question into Google today and the first answer often comes from Google itself. The AI Overview summarises several websites and usually sits right at the top. For many sites, that means fewer visits. But not equally for everyone, and that is exactly where small businesses have an opportunity.

Google’s AI Overviews have become everyday

The analytics company SISTRIX analysed more than 100 million search terms in Germany and last updated its figures on 13 October. Google shows an AI Overview for slightly more than 20 % of search terms, and for around 30 % of rare, very specific ones. 78.6 % of these overviews appear above all regular results.

It is telling where Google holds back: for search terms with shopping results, no AI Overview currently appears. And according to SISTRIX, their share has not grown for several months.

Whoever ranks first loses the most clicks

Without an AI Overview, just over 27 % of searchers click on the first result, according to SISTRIX. With an AI Overview, only 11 % do. Across all regular results, the share of searches with a click falls from 57 to 33 %.

Extrapolated, AI Overviews cost around 265 million clicks a month in Germany. That is about 6.6 % of all organic clicks. It sounds manageable, but it is an average that hides very different cases.

Google answers questions itself, not offers

Specialised health portals lose almost 30 % of their clicks, parenting and baby portals more than 24 %. Amazon, by contrast, loses 1.73 %, Idealo 0.85 % and Booking.com 0.46 %. SISTRIX sums up the pattern: those who enable transactions rather than answer questions are largely spared.

SISTRIX has no separate figures for local businesses. But the pattern suggests where it hits you and where it doesn’t. An advice article on how often to change your brake fluid now competes with Google’s answer. The page where you book the workshop appointment offers something no summary can replace. Someone looking for a garage nearby wants to get something done. An answer alone doesn’t help them.

Questions are moving straight to AI as well

Google is not the only place where answers are created. According to Bitkom, 58 % of people aged 16 and over in Germany use AI; 1,003 people were surveyed in February and March. Of the users, 54 % turn to it for everyday questions such as cooking and repairs, 34 % for health questions. For 41 %, AI is the first port of call for almost every question. Among those who don’t use AI, 54 % stick to other routes such as web search.

Help with shopping, by contrast, is named by only just over a third. So research is shifting. That makes it all the more important for your website to convince at the decisive moment: when someone no longer wants to ask, but to enquire or book.

Search Console shows your AI appearances

Since 31 August, Google Search Console has offered every website its own report on AI features. It shows how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, country and device. The report does not show clicks or search queries. If your website has too few of these impressions, it does not appear at all.

It is still a good start. Put the pages with many AI impressions next to their clicks in the regular performance report. If clicks are falling there, Google is probably already answering the question itself.

How solid are the figures? SISTRIX uses its own click model and does not disclose the period or device. The company sells SEO software itself. Still, the scale and the pattern are clear. The Bitkom study is a representative telephone survey.

What you can do now

1. Give every offer its own page. Service, region, process and a clear path to an enquiry belong on a dedicated page, not just on the home page.
2. Make the next step easy. Book an appointment, call, send an enquiry: people who land on your site usually want to act. Show them how right away.
3. Give people reasons to click. Advice with your own experience, photos from real projects, checklists or calculators offers more than a short answer.
4. Check Search Console. Open the new report on AI features and compare it with your clicks once a month.
5. Review your website as a whole. Loading time, mobile view and contact options decide whether a click becomes an enquiry. More on this in the article on websites that lose inquiries.

I build websites designed to generate enquiries and review existing sites in a website audit. If you want to know where your site is losing clicks and enquiries, get in touch.

Sources

1. SISTRIX (2026): Johannes Beus, AI Overviews in Deutschland: So stark sinken die Klickraten wirklich, Bonn, published 25 February 2026, updated 13 October 2026 (more than 100 million search terms in Germany; in German). sistrix.de
2. Bitkom (2026): Künstliche Intelligenz in Deutschland. Wie die Bevölkerung auf die neue Technologie blickt (AI in Germany: how the population sees the new technology), study report, Berlin, 2026 (1,003 respondents aged 16 and over, by telephone, February and March 2026; in German). bitkom.org
3. Google (2026): Hillel Maoz and Moshe Samet, Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, Google Search Central Blog, 3 June 2026. developers.google.com
4. Google (2026): Search Generative AI performance report, Search Console Help, accessed 29 October 2026. support.google.com