Market intelligence firm Similarweb reports that Google‘s AI Overviews now appear in 43% of searches, up from 15% a year ago, marking a rapid shift in how users interact with search. The data, covering June 2025 through May 2026, shows AI Mode visits more than doubled from 126 million to 279 million. Average search query length has increased, suggesting users are adopting longer, conversational queries instead of short keywords. This transformation turns Google from a gateway to the web into a destination, as users spend more time within Google‘s AI-generated answers rather than clicking through to external sites.

Publishers continue to lose referral traffic due to AI citations that rarely lead to clicks. Cloudflare introduced tools allowing publishers to block AI crawlers unless paid. The number of AI responses with citations has risen more than fivefold, but only 6.8% of U.S. ChatGPT desktop queries included citations as of May 2026. Some industries, such as travel, retail, and sports, see higher citation rates.

There is a partial bright spot for publishers: after a ChatGPT search update on May 7, 2026, the proportion of U.S. desktop referrals landing on webpages more than doubled from 25% in March 2026 to nearly 60% by May 30, 2026. However, the overall trend remains that Google‘s AI search is becoming the default, reducing the web’s link-based referral economy.