SEOs pile on after research says AI answers cut clicks
Lily Ray says the findings confirm what people in search have been saying all along.
Lily Ray has responded to research suggesting Google's AI Overviews (the AI written answer at the top of search results) mainly take clicks away from the sites they quote. Her reaction was blunt. "Oh look, everything we already knew was true - but were told is not true - is true."
Oh look, everything we already knew was true - but were told is not true - is true.
The research itself was posted by Jason Kint, who said he was sent it. He set it against Google's own position. Google says AI Overviews create a better experience and "higher quality" clicks. According to Kint, the research shows the opposite on three counts. AI Overviews did not improve satisfaction. They did not improve visit quality. And they reduced clicks to their sources. We covered the research itself earlier.
What is actually new here
Nothing about the numbers has changed. What is new is that people who work in search every day are treating this as confirmation rather than a surprise. Ray's line is about being told for a long time that the click loss was not real.
Kint did not publish who ran the research or the sample size in the post we saw, and Google has not responded to it publicly as far as the sources show. So treat it as one set of findings that one person was sent, not a settled fact.
What it means for your site
If your site depends on people searching a question and clicking through to your answer, this is the pattern you have probably already felt in your own numbers. Fewer clicks on the same rankings.
There is nothing to fix today. The one useful move is to stop judging your search performance on rankings alone. Open Google Search Console, click Performance, and compare clicks and impressions over the last six months. If impressions are steady or rising while clicks fall, you are seeing the effect described here rather than a ranking problem on your side.
That also tells you where to put your effort. Pages that make a sale or book a job hold their value better than pages that only answer a quick question an AI summary can swallow whole.
they just reduced clicks to their sources