01What the numbers say, and what they do not
Two sources are worth knowing. Pew Research Center followed the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025 and logged 68,879 Google searches. Some 18% of them produced an AI summary. When one appeared, people clicked a regular result in 8% of visits, against 15% when it did not. Clicks on the links inside the summary were rare, 1% of visits. The second source is Chartbeat data on publishers across the broader web, reported by 9to5Google in March 2026: Google Search traffic to those publishers fell 34% over the past year. Neither number is about your site. Pew is American and covers one month. Chartbeat measures publisher sites, not small businesses, so a local plumber or salon cannot read it as their own. We found no figure for Romanian small business sites that we could open and check, so we are not quoting one.
- Pew, March 2025: a regular result was clicked in 8% of visits with an AI summary, 15% without
- Pew: the links inside the summary were clicked in 1% of visits
- Chartbeat via 9to5Google: Google Search traffic to publisher sites down 34% in a year (not a small-business figure)
- We found no verified figure for Romanian small business sites
02Check first whether AI Overviews is the cause
Do not assume. A traffic drop has other causes: a page that lost its position, a page that fell out of the index, an analytics tag that broke in a redesign, a seasonal dip. Open Google Search Console, go to Performance and compare the last three months with the same three months a year earlier, because season swamps month-to-month comparisons. Read impressions, clicks and average position together. If impressions and position hold while clicks fall, people see you and skip you, which is the pattern a summary produces. If position or impressions fell, you lost ranking, and that is an ordinary SEO problem with ordinary fixes. Google says traffic from its AI features is counted inside your overall Search Console totals, under the Web search type, so there is no separate AI Overviews line to read. The pattern is a clue, not proof.
- Compare the same months a year apart, not this month against last month
- Impressions and position steady, clicks down: people see you and skip you
- Impressions or position down: a ranking problem, not a summary problem
- Check the page is still indexed and your analytics tag still fires
- Google reports AI feature traffic inside the Web total, with no separate line
03What to do when the pattern fits
Google's documentation says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode and no special optimizations, files or markup. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and the usual SEO practice applies. So the work is not a new trick. It is deciding where your clicks come from and which of them are worth defending. A summary tends to handle general questions well. It is a poor stand-in for your own price list, your open slots, your address and your reviews. Put your effort into pages and listings where the visitor needs you specifically, and judge them by enquiries, calls and bookings, not by sessions. Our posts on the local SEO checklist and on visits that bring no enquiries cover both halves in detail.
- Keep every page indexable and eligible for a snippet, no special markup needed
- Give each page what only you can say: prices, availability, area, how you work
- Keep your Google Business Profile and reviews current, since that is where a local customer sees your hours, phone and rating
- Measure enquiries, calls and bookings, not visits
- End every page with one clear next step
04Where PROOF48 helps, and where it is the wrong choice
We cannot win clicks back for you, and anyone who promises that is guessing. The FOUND plan, 297 EUR a month, does the work above: Google Business Profile management, local SEO on 5 target keywords, 2 AI blog posts a month in your voice, schema markup, a monthly ranking report and competitor and review monitoring. It carries no promise of a Google position. We publish no before-and-after traffic for AI Overviews, because we have not measured it for any client. We are the wrong choice in three cases: your drop turns out to be a broken analytics tag or a deindexed page, which you or your developer can fix for free; you need clicks back within weeks, since SEO takes months; or you want a guaranteed result, which nobody controls.
- FOUND, 297 EUR a month: Google Business Profile, local SEO on 5 keywords, 2 AI blog posts, schema, monthly ranking report
- No promise of a position or of recovered clicks
- Wrong choice if the drop is a broken tag or a deindexed page: fix that first, for free
- Wrong choice if you need results in weeks
A salon site rebuilt with a page per service
SCP Shine & Style, a beauty salon in Sector 3, Bucharest, already had a site and it ranked badly. PROOF48 rebuilt it with a page per service, a booking flow pointing at the salon's live booking platform, and a landmarks line on every page for local searches around Dristor and Titan. We publish no traffic or AI Overviews data for this site, because we do not measure it and will not estimate it.
See the build: SCP Shine & StyleQuestions, answered
Is my traffic drop caused by AI Overviews?
One number cannot tell you. Steady impressions and position with falling clicks fit the pattern, but Google reports AI feature traffic inside the Web total, so it stays a clue. Rule out a lost ranking, a deindexed page and a broken tag first.
Is 8% versus 15% the drop I should expect?
No. That is Pew's figure for 900 US adults in March 2025 across all their searches. Your queries, your market and your pages will differ, and Pew did not split results by business type.
Does writing for AI answers bring the clicks back?
Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode need no special optimization beyond normal SEO. Clear pages that answer the question and give a reason to visit are worth having anyway, but nobody can promise recovered clicks.
Does PROOF48 guarantee recovered traffic?
No. Nobody controls Google positions. We do the work in the FOUND plan and send a monthly ranking report, and we publish no AI Overviews traffic figures because we have not measured them.
Where PROOF48 fits
AI summaries do cut clicks: Pew saw 8% of visits click a regular result with a summary and 15% without. Before blaming them, compare the same months a year apart in Search Console and rule out a lost ranking, a deindexed page and a broken tag. Then defend the pages only you can write, and measure enquiries instead of visits. PROOF48's FOUND plan, 297 EUR a month, does that work and promises no position.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.