The short answer
Yes, but the win looks different. Pew Research found that when a Google result page shows an AI Overview, people click a traditional link about 8 percent of the time, versus 15 percent when no summary appears. SEO still works: it now has to earn a spot inside that summary and the map pack, not just the links below it.
Every business owner who has watched Search Console traffic dip over the past two years has asked some version of the same question: is SEO even still worth doing if Google just summarizes the answer and nobody clicks through anymore? The honest answer is that the summaries are real, the click drop is real and measured, and SEO still works, because it now has to win a spot inside the summary and the map pack, not only the ten blue links underneath. This post walks through what the actual data says, why ranking still matters even with fewer clicks attached to it, and what changes about how the work gets done in 2026.
What does the data actually say about AI Overviews and clicks?
A Pew Research Center analysis, published July 22, 2025, tracked the browsing behavior of 900 U.S. adults across roughly 69,000 real Google searches collected in March 2025. About 58% of those users saw at least one AI-generated summary that month. The finding that matters most for anyone doing SEO: people were meaningfully less likely to click a traditional search result when an AI Overview appeared on the page.
| What happened after the search | Page showed an AI Overview | Page had no AI Overview |
|---|---|---|
| Clicked a traditional search result | 8% of visits | 15% of visits |
| Clicked a link inside the AI summary itself | 1% of visits | not applicable |
| Left the search page without clicking anything further | 26% of visits | 16% of visits |
That is not a small shift. A traditional result got clicked roughly half as often when a summary sat above it, and the share of searches that ended with no click at all went up by ten points. If you are only counting organic clicks the way you did in 2022, the number will look like SEO stopped working. What it actually shows is that Google moved more of the answer onto the results page itself.
Why does ranking #1 still matter if fewer people click?
Two reasons, and both come out of the same dataset. First, AI Overviews cite sources, and being one of the two or three sources an Overview pulls from is itself worth something: the summary carries your business's information even when the click doesn't happen, and the citation slots skew toward sites that already rank well. Second, the 8% and 15% numbers are not zero. On a keyword with real monthly volume, an 8% click rate on a page you rank for is still real traffic; the businesses actually losing out are the ones not ranking at all, who were getting closer to nothing already.
The pages worth fighting for in 2026 are the ones with a real shot at being cited, not just clicked: content that answers a specific question directly, structured so an AI system can lift a clean passage out of it, backed by a site healthy enough that Google trusts the source. That is a description of good SEO work, just measured by a wider set of outcomes than click-through rate alone.
What actually moves inside an AI Overview and the map pack?
For local and regional businesses specifically, two things do most of the work. The technical and content foundation, meaning a fast, indexable site with pages that answer the searches your buyers actually run, is what makes a page eligible to be cited at all; Google cannot summarize content it cannot crawl or trust. And a maintained Google Business Profile, meaning current categories, real photos, a steady flow of reviews, is what shows up in the map pack, which sits above both the Overview and the organic results for anything with local intent and has not lost ground the way organic clicks have.
Running those two as one program instead of two disconnected vendors is the actual shift worth making. A technically clean site with no local signal and a great Business Profile attached to a broken site both leave the other half of the opportunity on the table. That is the case for treating SEO and local visibility as one system rather than a content subscription plus a separate map listing fix.
Where does the work end and answer engine optimization begin?
SEO and answer engine optimization share a foundation, structured content, a trustworthy site, real proof of who you are, but they are not the same discipline. SEO is still substantially about ranking, clicks, and the map pack inside Google's own results page. Getting named inside a ChatGPT or Perplexity answer, where there is no results page at all, has its own set of requirements around how a business is defined as an entity and how content is shaped to be quoted directly. We go into that difference in what answer engine optimization actually is.
FAQ
Should I stop investing in SEO because of AI Overviews?
No. The Pew data shows clicks dropped, not that ranking became worthless. Pages that rank still get clicked, still get cited inside AI summaries, and still carry the map pack, which remains one of the highest-intent placements on the page. Stopping SEO removes you from all three at once.
Does a higher ranking increase the odds of being cited in an AI Overview?
Google has not published the exact mechanics, but citations in AI Overviews consistently skew toward sources that already rank well and are structured clearly enough to summarize cleanly. Good technical SEO and clear, direct content remain the closest thing to a lever you have.
How is local SEO different from general organic SEO in this shift?
Local intent searches keep the map pack above both the AI Overview and the organic results, and the map pack has held up better than general organic clicks. That is one reason a maintained Google Business Profile matters as much in 2026 as a technically healthy site.
Want to know where your site actually stands, technical health, content gaps, and your Business Profile, before deciding what to fix first? Start with a look at what the program covers.