Why is search changing? A little background

Since ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, millions of people have started asking AI chatbots the kinds of questions they used to type into Google. Rather than lose those searches, Google began building the same technology, called a large language model, into search itself. That is what the AI Overview is: instead of only handing you a list of blue links, search now reads pages for you and drafts an answer, with the links underneath as sources. Google began rolling AI Overviews out broadly in May 2024, and they now appear on a large share of question-style searches, including in Australia.

The change has brought teething problems. When the answer sits at the top of the page, fewer people click through to the websites that provided the information. A Pew Research Center study (published 22 July 2025, analysing 68,879 real Google searches from March 2025) found that when an AI summary appeared, people clicked a regular result on only 8% of visits, compared with 15% when there was no summary, and clicked the AI summary's own source links just 1% of the time. Many news publishers allege much steeper traffic falls and some are pursuing complaints, which is why you may hear this called a threat to the open web. The full citations are at the bottom of this page.

What it means for you: the AI answer is convenient, and often right, but the websites underneath it are where the information actually comes from. Clicking through to the source is both how you double-check the AI, and how the people who wrote the information get visitors, and stay in business.