What AI Overviews do to website traffic, and how to respond

Every click figure in this post comes from the United States. The best-documented evidence on what AI summaries do to clicks comes from Pew Research and SparkToro, plus Google's rebuttal of Pew, and none of it measures the UAE. We looked for a UAE equivalent and none turned up, so what follows tells you what to expect and how to check your own site, not what you've already lost.

What do the studies measure?

Three sets of figures get quoted most, and each counts something different, so they shouldn't be added together or lined up as a trend. Pew's term for a Google AI Overview is an AI summary.

The one pattern worth taking seriously is in Pew's own comparison: in the visits it observed, a traditional result was clicked about half as often when a summary appeared. That's an association in a sample of 900 US adults that Google disputes, not a measurement of lost traffic.

The SparkToro numbers need a different warning. SparkToro's Rand Fishkin warns that the 2024 and 2026 studies aren't like for like, so a move from 360 to 232 clicks per 1,000 searches shouldn't be quoted as a decline.

Does any of this apply to the UAE?

The feature does, but the click data doesn't. Google's Search Help page, viewed in November 2026, lists the United Arab Emirates and Arabic among the places and languages where AI Overviews are available. Availability doesn't mean every search shows one, and no figure for how often UAE searches in English or Arabic do was found.

The UAE also leads one global ranking of generative AI use. Microsoft's AI Diffusion report for the second quarter of 2026 put it first, with 73.3% of people aged 15 to 64 having used a generative AI product, against 18.8% worldwide in June 2026. That measures having tried a product, not daily use and not use at work. OpenAI says ChatGPT has about 1.2 billion weekly users worldwide, a company figure that is unaudited and comes with no UAE breakdown.

Those facts are a reason to look at your own numbers early. They aren't evidence that UAE searchers click less, because nobody has published that measurement. These are the gaps, and a vendor quoting a UAE traffic-loss figure should be asked for the sample, the dates, the method and what counted as a click.

• How often UAE searches in English or in Arabic show an AI Overview
• How UAE users click when one appears
• Whether Pew's gap between 8% and 15% would hold here, given Google's objection to the method
• Any UAE-specific figure for ChatGPT use
• A current user count for AI Overviews anywhere

Which of your pages are exposed?

Informational pages are the exposed ones, and that's reasoning from how a summary works, not a measured result. A definition or a short how-to can be answered in a paragraph, so the click is optional. A price list, a booking form, a stock page, a branch map or a quote calculator can't be completed inside a summary, so the click is the point.

Even a large fall in informational clicks moves your total less than the headlines suggest. Say 60% of your organic clicks land on informational pages and those clicks fall by a quarter, which would cut your total organic clicks by 15%. What that costs you depends on how many enquiries those clicks ever produced, and you can look that up instead of guessing.

1. 01In Google Search Console, export 12 months of clicks and impressions by page.
2. 02Tag every page informational or commercial. Be strict: a page that answers a question without asking for anything is informational.
3. 03In GA4, pull enquiries by landing page (form sends and WhatsApp clicks), and work out each group's share of clicks and its share of enquiries.
4. 04Compare clicks per impression for the informational group in the same months of two consecutive years. Ramadan and summer move demand in the UAE, so consecutive months mislead. The UAE marketing calendar shows when.

How should a UAE business respond?

Put effort where a summary can't finish the job, and judge the rest by the enquiries it produces.

• Move effort to pages where the click is the point. Price, availability, booking and quote pages can't be completed inside a summary, so make them fast, complete and quick to reach on a phone, with the WhatsApp button where the decision happens.
• Track branded searches as their own line in Search Console. If people read a summary and then search your name, that is where the benefit shows up.
• Publish proof a summary can't generate: your own numbers, named case facts, licence details, photographs, prices. Those are the parts worth clicking through for.
• Keep your informational content, but stop judging it by sessions. Judge it by the enquiries and links it produces, and ask whoever runs your SEO to report informational and commercial pages as two separate lines.
• Don't chase inclusion as a goal. Google's documentation lists no requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, so there's no separate checklist to buy. The post on appearing in AI Overviews covers what Google does say.

The zero-click search entry explains the wider pattern. Run the export this week: that one table will tell you more about your exposure than every American study above.