Google’s AI Overviews now appear in nearly half of all searches, reshaping how we find information

In just one year, Google’s AI-generated search summaries have gone from a niche feature to a near-ubiquitous part of the search experience. New data from market intelligence firm Similarweb shows that AI Overviews now appear in 43% of all Google searches, up from just 15% the year before. That means nearly one out of every two searches now starts with a machine-written answer rather than a list of links.

The shift isn’t just about visibility—it’s changing how long people stay on Google. Visits to Google’s dedicated AI Mode more than doubled over the same period, rising from 126 million in June 2025 to 279 million by May 2026. And the average length of a search query has grown, as users trade short keywords for longer, more conversational questions designed for AI. This suggests that more people are treating Google as a destination for answers rather than a gateway to other websites.

That trend is bad news for publishers. AI summaries often cite sources without sending users to the actual pages, cutting off referral traffic. Similarweb previously flagged how devastating this has been for news sites. In response, Cloudflare launched tools that let publishers block AI crawlers unless the companies pay for access. Still, citations are on the rise—the number of AI responses that include a citation has jumped more than fivefold in the past year. But only 6.8% of U.S. ChatGPT desktop queries included citations as of May 2026.

There is a sliver of hope for publishers. After a May 7 search update, ChatGPT desktop referrals improved dramatically: the share of visits landing on webpages more than doubled from 25% in March 2026 to nearly 60% by the end of May. That suggests users click through when blue links are prominent. Even so, the larger trend is clear: Google is remaking itself from a portal to the open web into the information destination itself.