Google AI Overviews rapidly becoming the default in search, new data shows
Google/DeepMind
OpenAI
Similarweb
Cloudflare
Google's AI-generated search answers, AI Overviews, have expanded from 15% to 43% of searches in a year, while AI Mode visits more than doubled. This shift increases user time on Google but reduces referral traffic to publishers, who are fighting back with tools to block AI crawlers.
According to a Similarweb report, Google's AI Overviews now appear in 43% of searches, up from 15% a year ago. AI Mode visits rose from 126 million in June 2025 to 279 million by May 2026. The average length of Google searches has increased as users adopt conversational queries. Publishers are losing referral traffic due to AI citations that don't generate clicks. Cloudflare introduced tools for publishers to block AI crawlers unless paid. The number of AI responses with citations has grown fivefold, but only 6.8% of U.S. ChatGPT desktop queries included citations by May 2026. However, after a May 7 update, ChatGPT desktop referrals more than doubled from 25% in March 2026 to nearly 60% by May 30, 2026, as users clicked on blue links.
Source: TechCrunch AI —
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