A new analysis shows that Google’s automated search summaries are changing how people use search.
Seer Interactive reviewed millions of impressions across more than 3,000 queries and found that organic click-through rates on searches that display Google’s summaries dropped about 61 percent. Searches that do not show those summaries also lost clicks, down roughly 41 percent, which points to a broader shift in user behavior.
Traffic Takes a Hit
Seer tracked 3,119 informational queries across 42 organizations from June 2024 through September 2025. For queries where Google served an automated summary, organic click-through rate fell from 1.76 percent to 0.61 percent. Paid search on those same queries dropped even more steeply, from 19.7 percent to 6.34 percent over the same period. That 68 percent fall in paid clicks represents a dramatic loss of engagement for advertisers running campaigns on informational keywords.
Even queries where Google did not show a summary suffered declines. Organic CTR for non-summary queries moved from about 2.72 percent at the start of the tracking window to around 1.62 percent by September 2025, a fall of about 41 percent. In plain terms, searches are still happening, but far fewer users are following links through to publisher pages or advertiser landing pages.
Part of the explanation lies in how results pages are laid out today. Google increasingly presents information directly on the results page through widgets, knowledge panels, price displays and local listings. Those on-page elements let users get answers without visiting another site. Where automated summaries appear, they occupy prime screen space and can satisfy the user’s query without a click.
Behavior Shift Beyond Summaries
The pattern suggests a deeper change in how people approach search. Impressions for tracked queries have not disappeared. Instead, the share of results that get clicked has shrunk. That means publishers may still appear in results often, but their ability to convert impressions into visits has declined substantially.
The study also highlights a citation effect. When a brand is mentioned within Google’s summary, that brand tends to get more clicks. Seer reports that brands cited in summaries earned about 35 percent more organic clicks and roughly 91 percent more paid clicks than brands not cited. The report stops short of proving cause, and it notes that brands with stronger authority may be more likely to be cited in the first place. Still, the correlation is consistent and meaningful for marketers.
For businesses that depend on traffic for ad revenue, subscriptions, or lead generation, the shift matters. Traditional success metrics built around clicks and visits now look less useful for high-funnel informational queries. Visibility measures such as how often a brand is cited or how frequently its content appears in summaries may become more important.
There is also a mixed user experience element. Many searchers may prefer quick answers on the results page for simple factual queries. That may be convenient for users while being harmful to publishers who once relied on organic traffic to build audiences.
Seer’s report does not claim to predict whether these trends will stabilize. It does show a sustained decline across most metrics in the 15 months it analyzed. For now the picture is clear: search behavior is changing. People still use Google to find answers, but they click far less often than they did a year ago.
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