Google defends AI Search features amid website traffic concerns

New Delhi: Google has responded to growing concerns that its AI-powered Search features are reducing referral traffic to publishers, stating that overall click volumes remain stable and that the quality of clicks has improved year-on-year.

Earlier, according to many publishers, Google’s AI Overviews have been quietly reshaping digital publishing by bypassing the traditional link between search queries and clicks. As users increasingly get answers directly from search results, referral traffic has dropped sharply, especially for evergreen and explanatory content.

In a blog post dated, Liz Reid, Vice President and Head of Google Search, acknowledged that questions had been raised about how the rollout of AI Overviews and other generative features might affect website traffic. However, she claimed that the company continues to send “billions of clicks to the web every day” and that its AI integrations are “built to highlight the web, not replace it.”

According to Google’s internal data, while total organic clicks to websites from Search have remained relatively steady, the platform is now driving “slightly more quality clicks” than a year ago, defined as sessions where users do not bounce back immediately after clicking. The company suggested this counters third-party reports that have warned of a significant drop in search-driven web traffic.

“AI Overviews”, which provide summarised answers at the top of results pages, have led to users submitting more queries, often longer and more complex in nature, the company said. In these instances, Google claims that users are often shown more links than before, increasing opportunities for sites to receive traffic.

However, for more factual or transactional queries, such as looking up calendar events or sports scores, the company conceded that users may not click through at all. “This has also been true for other answer features we’ve added, like the Knowledge Graph,” the blog post stated.

Google noted that although overall traffic volumes are stable, shifts in user behaviour have affected individual websites differently. “People are increasingly seeking out and clicking on sites with forums, videos, podcasts, and posts where they can hear authentic voices and first-hand perspectives,” Reid wrote, adding that content offering original analysis or unique viewpoints appears to be benefiting from these shifts.

The statement appears to be a direct rebuttal to recent third-party analytics reports and public criticism from publishers, who argue that AI-generated summaries are disincentivising users from clicking through to source websites, thereby undermining the open web ecosystem.

Reid maintained that Google’s AI models are designed to cite and link to source material visibly within AI-generated responses, and that web publishers retain control over how their content appears in Search through established protocols.

“As a search company, we care passionately, perhaps more than any other company, about the health of the web ecosystem,” she wrote. “It’s not the web or AI, it’s both.”

She concluded that the integration of AI into Search represents not a threat but an “expansionary” moment for the internet, enabling deeper user engagement and new opportunities for creators. Nonetheless, the post comes amid intensifying scrutiny from publishers, regulators and antitrust bodies over how AI is reshaping access to information online.