The news: Google updated AI Mode and AI Overviews to make links more prominent as zero-click searches skyrocket, per a blog post.

Five new features:

• Deep dives. After the AI response, results show several bullet points and links for further exploration on the searched topic.
• Subscriptions. Search results label content a user has subscribed to, including users’ Facebook groups; for publishers, Google now offers subscription linking within its Publisher Center to boost clicks.
• Expert advice. AI Overviews will surface review sites, social media posts, and discussion boards while giving original posters credit for their recommendations.
• In-line links. These appear directly next to bullet points, not grouped and displayed in the right-hand rail.
• Website previews. Hovering over an in-line link on desktop opens a pop-up preview that includes a linked headline, a short description, and the site name.

Why this matters: Google is addressing the elephant in the room—clickthrough rates (CTR) are down, and publishers are losing traffic to zero-click searches.

• AI Overviews reduce CTRs on the top-ranking search result page by 58%, Ahrefs found, based on data from December. In April 2025, that number was 34.5%.
• Paid link CTRs drop to 6% from 13% when AI Overviews are present, per Seer Interactive.
• AI Overviews decrease publisher referral traffic by as much as 25%, per Digital Content Next.

That data is a problem for the symbiotic relationship between Google and publishers. Google needs publishers for it to even exist as a search product, and publishers need Google for their websites to be discovered. Google’s AI revisions could help address publishers’ concerns and the European Commission, which opened an antitrust inquiry into AI Overviews in December.

The caveat: Google is just one player in the zero-click challenge, but it’s still the biggest by user base—we forecast Google will have 266.3 million US users in 2027 versus ChatGPT’s 122.3 million.

Other AI engines like Perplexity and Anthropic’s Claude also contribute to the CTR decline. Search users have become accustomed to getting all of their answers in one place without the need to click away. Google boosting the number of visible links might not affect zero-click behavior.

Recommendations for brands: AI Overview changes mean more of a brand’s or publisher’s content will appear in searches. That requires auditing your Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) components to ensure the title link and snippet are unique, fall within recommended length limits, and are front-loaded with critical content.

SEO and generative engine optimization (GEO) are one and the same in Google’s update. CTRs might not make a comeback, but brand visibility is getting a boost.

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