Google’s artificial intelligence recaps are eating away at its clicks, according to a new survey from Pew Research Center.
The survey found American users were nearly half as likely (46.7%) to click on a search link after reading an AI summary provided by Google atop the page. Here is the key section of Pew’s survey, which was based on 900 respondents and released on Tuesday:
“Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits),” Pew wrote.
Pew continued: “Google users who encountered an AI summary also rarely clicked on a link in the summary itself. This occurred in just 1% of all visits to pages with such a summary.”
The survey recap was written by Pew data scientist Athena Chapekis and Anna Lieb, a computational social science assistant.
Google introduced AI summaries atop some its search results last year, and Pew found 18% of the 68,879 searches its respondents made included an AI recap. The survey also found “users are more likely to end their browsing session entirely after visiting a search page with an AI summary”; 26% of pages with an AI summary were closed out instantly, compared to 16% of pages that did not have recaps.
Pew’s survey comes as concerns over how AI is eating into web traffic have grown in the media world — and other industries as well. Apple VP Eddy Cue recently noted Safari searches dipped for the first time in two decades, likely due to the rise of AI; Google pushed back on that claim, and the company reported its “Search and Other” business grew 10% year-over-year to $50.7 billion in Q1.
Google has an opportunity to talk about — and be asked by analysts about — AI’s affect on search on Wednesday afternoon, when it reports its second quarter earnings. Check TheWrap after the closing bell for a look at Google’s Q2 performance.
