Article
Measure Organic Performance Separately for AI Overview Queries
A combined organic traffic total can hide where change is happening, so track searches that show AI Overviews on their own line.
Owners of independent local service businesses in the United States
- Supporting sections
- 4
- Questions answered
- 4
- Research captured
- 2026-10-05
Most owners, and the agencies or freelancers who report to them, watch one number each month: total visits from organic search. That number can rise, fall or hold steady for many reasons, and it does not tell you whether a change is happening on searches where Google shows an AI Overview or on everything else.
In August 2026, Ars Technica reported on a Pew Research study of 900 US adults. According to that report, the study concluded that Google AI Overviews reduced website referrals by almost half compared with the traditional "10 blue links" format. That figure describes how a group of people clicked. It is not a measurement of your website, and it does not say your own traffic has fallen by any amount.
What it does suggest is a reporting habit. If the searches your customers use display AI Overviews, those searches deserve their own line in your numbers, so you can see their clicks and referrals apart from the rest. This page explains what was reported, why a combined total can hide the pattern, and a simple test you can ask for: set a baseline, annotate when AI Overviews appear, and compare over time without assuming the feature caused what you see.
The argument
The thesis
A combined organic traffic total can hide changes that are concentrated in searches displaying AI Overviews. Tracking impressions, clicks, click-through rate and referral activity separately for those queries, with AI Overview presence noted, gives a clearer view, provided you do not assume the feature caused any change.
What was reported
The report comes from an Ars Technica article published 2026-08-01 under the headline "As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google's AI Overviews." The article's main subject is Reddit's chief executive questioning whether AI Overviews deliver value to publishers. Within it, Ars Technica cites a Pew Research study of 900 US adults.
As Ars Technica reported it, the study concluded that AI Overviews reduced website referrals by almost half compared with the traditional "10 blue links" format. The reported comparison is between two ways of presenting search results: results with an AI Overview and the older list of links.
The article gives that one finding. This page does not add detail about how the study was run beyond the 900 US adults, and you should read the figure as a reason to measure your own searches, not as a forecast for your business.
Why a traffic total can hide the pattern
A monthly organic total blends together every search that sends people to your site. Some of those searches may display an AI Overview and some may not. If clicks change only on the ones that do, the total can look like a small drift, or even stay flat if other searches grow, while the searches that matter most to you behave quite differently.
For a local service business, the practical risk is misreading the cause. A dip in total visits could be seasonal demand, a ranking change, a competitor, or something specific to searches with AI Overviews. A single total cannot separate these. Query-level monitoring gives you a clearer view of the clicks and referrals associated with the searches where an AI Overview appears.
This is a way of looking, not a verdict. Separating the numbers lets you see whether the two groups of searches move together or apart. It does not by itself tell you why they moved.
Takeaway
If your target searches show AI Overviews, stop relying on one blended organic total. Ask for those queries to be tracked on their own: baseline the numbers, note when an AI Overview appears, and compare over time. Report what changed and leave cause open, because the reported Pew finding describes how 900 US adults clicked, not how your site performs.
First step
Set a baseline
Capture impressions, clicks, click-through rate and referral activity for each target query that displays an AI Overview.
Ongoing habit
Annotate AI Overview presence
Record when you observe an AI Overview so later changes can be read against what the results page looked like.
Guardrail
Compare without assuming cause
Questions
Frequently asked
Sources
1 sources, captured 2026-10-05 · show· hide
Vendor pages change. Figures are as published on the capture date; confirm before deciding.