Similarweb released a report shows that since the launch of Google AI Overviews in May 2024, zero-click search (as coined by Rand Fishkin) grew 13 percentage points, from 56% to 69% in May 2025 - just a year later.
TechCrunch covered this and shared this chart from the report that shows the decline in clicks:
Zero-click share increases significantly while organic traffic to news sites drops significantly since the rollout of AI Overviews. Organic traffic has also declined, dropping from over 2.3 billion visits at its peak in mid-2024 to now under 1.7 billion.
Meanwhile, Google executives keep throwing out that the web is thriving and questions all these studies on clicks. But even in their own Google Search Console reports, we are being shown the great decoupling of impressions to clicks. Yet, Google won't break down those impressions/clicks from web versus AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Here are some more charts Similarweb dropped:
Referrals from ChatGPT to news publishers increased by 25x year-over-year.
— Similarweb (@Similarweb) July 2, 2025
Publishers like Reuters, NY Post, and Business Insider have emerged as major beneficiaries.
However, outlets such as CNN, are absent from the referral rankings, while others, like the New York Times,… pic.twitter.com/LkdLlFh8df
I should note that for news queries, AI Overviews don't show up as often - at least in general. So there is that.
The data about news publishers is interesting since AIOs don't really trigger for news queries. But for other content on news publisher sites, I get the AIO impact. But again, do some searches for newsy topics. You'll see Top Stories and no AIOs. See screenshot below. At least… https://t.co/bP01nuNK5B pic.twitter.com/BUxVcFJ0H0
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) July 3, 2025
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