VercatusBaseline evidence on searches without external clicks
A large share of searches ended without a click even before AI summaries: SparkToro and Datos measured 58.5% of US and 59.7% of EU Google searches ending with zero clicks (clickstream panel, 2022–May 2024). AI summaries raise the rate further on affected queries: Pew found users ended their browsing session on 26% of pages with an AI summary vs 16% with only traditional results. Traffic is a lagging, partial indicator of search visibility.
Sources
- 1
- 2Pew Research · 2025Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the resultspewresearch.org
CGrade C: reputable industry data or observation. A grade describes the provenance of the sources above; it is not a probability that a change will work. The effect basis says how the size of the effect is known: measured by a study, taken from an industry report, only documented without a size, or not quantified.
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