Google’s AI Overviews feature has led to a significant increase in the frequency of “zero clicks” to search queries — drastically reducing traffic to news websites, according to a new report.
Since the Big Tech giant rolled out its artificial intelligence tool in May 2024, the percentage of web searches related to news that end without a click to a news site jumped to 69% in May 2025 from 56% for the same month last year, according to the latest figures from digital intelligence firm SimilarWeb.
The decrease in “click-through rates” has resulted in overall organic traffic to news sites — which typically comes through Google’s dominant search engine — sinking to under 1.7 billion visits in May 2025 from a peak of more than 2.3 billion in mid-2024, the SimilarWeb data shows.
Google’s AI Overviews feature is significantly reducing traffic to news websites thanks to the increase in