Google's AI Overviews are eating the search clicks — and the ad dollars that come with them

Google is rolling out AI-generated answers directly on search results pages, replacing the old blue links with a big text box at the top. The result is a quiet but real shift: people stop clicking through to sites and start reading the answer right there on the page. The ads haven't moved — they sit below the fold — but the organic traffic is bleeding out. Sites that relied on search are watching their numbers shrink while Google's own answers grow bigger and more useful.

The study from Semrush looked at how this plays out across categories. For some, the AI answer is a net positive — it surfaces the right page and drives clicks. For others, the answer is good enough to stand alone and the click disappears. The pattern is the same: Google is becoming the destination, not the doorway.

Why this matters for us: la gente who find their answers through Google will increasingly never visit the sites behind those links — small businesses, local services, community shops — the ones that live on search traffic and are now competing with their own search results page.