Executive summary
On Google results pages with an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary, and clicked a link inside the summary in only 1% of visits.
Key findings
- 8% vs 15% Clicks on result links fell
Visits with an AI summary led to a result click 8% of the time; visits without one, 15%. - 1% Few clicks on summary links
Only 1% of visits to pages with a summary included a click on a link in the summary. - 26% vs 16% More sessions ended
Users ended their session after 26% of pages with a summary, compared with 16% of pages without. - about 18% How often summaries appeared
Summaries appeared in roughly 18% of searches, and in 60% of searches phrased as questions.
Methodology
Browsing activity collected through an installed app from members of a US probability panel in March 2025. Pew then collected the matching search results pages in April 2025 and identified which showed AI summaries.
The Pew Research Center, a US research organization, published this short study on July 22, 2025. It is one of the few public datasets on how AI summaries change what people do in search, which is why it is cited in debates about traffic to websites.
How to read it
It uses browsing data from people who agreed to share it, for one month in 2025, and only for Google. Pew notes technical limits in identifying AI summaries on other search engines. Google has disputed the study, according to PPC Land. The numbers describe that panel and month; the share of searches with summaries has likely changed since.