Someone Got Their Answer From Google and Never Visited Your Site. Did You Lose a Customer?
Imagine Jonas. He’s fictional.
Jonas owns a plumbing company.
For years, “water heater repair near me” brought him about forty visitors a month, and a few of them called.
This year the visitors dropped. His rankings didn’t.
He checks Google himself. Above his listing, a summary answers the question: signs your water heater is failing, what repairs cost, when to call a pro.
The searcher got what she needed. She never clicked.
Did Jonas lose a customer? Or did he lose a visit?
Those aren’t the same thing.
How many clicks are disappearing?
Less than the scariest headlines say, but more than anyone wanted.
Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. On Google pages with an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits. On pages without one, it was 15%. That’s roughly half as often. Only 1% of visits clicked a link inside the summary itself. (Pew says this is an association, not proof the summary caused it.)
Ahrefs looked at 300,000 keywords and reported that when an AI Overview shows up, the top result’s click-through rate was 58% lower than what it would have been otherwise, comparing December 2023 to December 2025. That “would have been” is a model, and the data is desktop only. Ahrefs itself says it’s a correlation, and other studies landed between roughly 47% and 65%.
So the honest summary: clicks are falling, on certain queries, by a lot. The exact number depends on who measured and how.
Is a lost click a lost customer?
Sometimes. Often not.
Think about who clicks on “what is a water heater flush.” Someone doing homework. Not someone about to hire.
Now think about “emergency plumber open now.” Someone ready to pay. That person still clicks or calls.
Here is an opinion, not a finding: the clicks that disappear first are the easiest ones, the questions a summary can answer. The clicks that remain are more likely to come from someone who wants a person.
If that holds for you, you lose traffic and keep buyers. Check your own numbers before you believe it. Compare leads, not visits.
Keep reading with a free account.