AI Overviews Click Test Results and Earnings Divergence – SEO Pulse
▼ Summary
– Google’s Liz Reid argues AI Overviews reduce low-value “bounce clicks” from publishers, but Google has not shared data to verify this claim.
– A randomized field experiment found AI Overviews caused a 38% drop in organic clicks and a 33% rise in zero-clicks, without reducing user satisfaction.
– Google Search revenue grew 19% in Q1 2026 to $60.4 billion, but this does not clarify whether publisher traffic from AI-influenced results is increasing or decreasing.
– Microsoft announced Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users, though its global search share remains around 5%, and Microsoft has not defined how the MAU figure is counted.
– The article’s theme highlights that different sources—Google, Microsoft, and independent studies—measure different aspects of search, leaving the overall impact of AI on traffic unclear.
Google’s head of Search, Liz Reid, has doubled down on the “bounce clicks” defense in a recent Bloomberg interview, arguing that AI Overviews primarily eliminate superficial visits rather than meaningful engagement. Speaking on the Odd Lots podcast, Reid described bounce clicks as instances where users quickly land on a publisher page, grab a single fact, and leave. According to her, AI Overviews remove exactly these low-value interactions while preserving deeper visits. The problem remains that Google has yet to release any supporting data for this claim, leaving third-party analysts skeptical.
Reid has maintained this position across at least three public appearances over the past year. She insists publishers aren’t losing the traffic that truly matters. Without published metrics distinguishing bounce clicks from substantive visits, however, the argument remains an unverified narrative rather than an evidence-backed conclusion.
Independent research now challenges that narrative directly. A working paper from the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University conducted a randomized field experiment with 1,065 U. S. participants, assigning them to normal Search, Search without AI Overviews, or AI Mode. The results were stark: when AI Overviews appeared, organic clicks fell 38%, and zero-click searches rose 33%. Crucially, removing AI Overviews did not impact user satisfaction, perceived quality, or ease of finding information. The researchers describe this as the first randomized experiment to isolate the causal effect of AI Overviews on clicks. Prior studies from Seer, Chartbeat, and Pew were observational or correlational. This randomized design allows the authors to state definitively that AI Overviews caused the click reduction, not just that the two coincided. The satisfaction finding puts further pressure on Reid’s argument. If removing AI Overviews doesn’t degrade the user experience, it becomes harder to dismiss the lost clicks as purely low-value.
Meanwhile, Alphabet’s Q1 2026 earnings paint a different picture. Google Search revenue reached $60.4 billion, up 19% year over year and accelerating from 17% growth in Q4 2025. CEO Sundar Pichai noted that queries are at an all-time high and that AI experiences are driving increased Search usage. Google Cloud crossed $20 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, up 63%. Pichai told analysts that more details about Search would come at Google I/O in May. The revenue growth does not resolve the click-impact debate, however. Higher Search revenue and more queries describe the ad business, not publisher traffic. Strong earnings are consistent with both “clicks are fine” and “clicks are down but ad yield per query is up.” The data does not reveal whether individual pages are receiving more or fewer clicks from AI-influenced results.
Matthew Scott Goldstein, an independent analyst and consultant, offered a sharp critique on LinkedIn, calling this “extraction at scale dressed up as innovation.” He noted that the same content powering AI Overviews, Gemini answers, and enterprise token volume is content publishers have sued over, lost referral traffic from, and watched get re-monetized inside a closed product.
On the Microsoft side, Bing reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, announced during its Q3 FY2026 earnings call. CEO Satya Nadella shared the figure alongside an 18% overall revenue increase to $82.9 billion. Search ad revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs, grew 12% year over year. Edge maintained browser market share gains for the 20th consecutive quarter. The segment that includes Bing was down 1% overall at $13.2 billion. The 1 billion MAU milestone is notable, but context matters. According to StatCounter’s March 2026 data, Bing’s global search share sits at about 5%. That gap suggests Microsoft has not defined frequency, overlap, or how AI-related Bing usage is counted. At SEO Week earlier this month, Microsoft previewed Citation Share and three other Bing Webmaster Tools features. When those ship, they could give users a clearer way to compare AI citation visibility against competitors on Bing.
The theme running through every story this week is the same question, asked from a different angle: What is AI doing to search traffic? Reid says the lost clicks were low-value. The field experiment shows the lost clicks came without any trade-off in user satisfaction. Google’s earnings say revenue is up 19%. Microsoft’s earnings say Bing hit a user milestone, yet it still holds a 5% share. Each one measures something real, and none of them measure the same thing. The gap between what platforms report and what publishers experience does not appear to be closing. The public data needed to answer the click question directly still isn’t available. Per-query click behavior segmented by AI feature presence isn’t in any tool that Google or Microsoft has shipped.
(Source: Search Engine Journal)
