A lot of owners are looking at the same chart. Google Search Console shows impressions holding up or even climbing. Rankings are roughly where they were. But clicks are down, and Google Analytics shows fewer organic sessions than last year. Nothing broke. No penalty arrived. The traffic just thinned out.
That gap between impressions and clicks is the whole story. When Google answers a question directly at the top of the results page, the searcher can get what they came for without visiting anyone's website. The impression still counts. The click doesn't happen.
What the evidence actually shows
The Pew Research Center published a study of real browsing behaviour on 22 July 2025. It reported that users clicked a traditional search result on about 8% of visits where a generated summary was present, compared with about 15% of visits where no summary appeared — roughly half the click-through rate. The same study reported that users ended their browsing session after a page with a summary more often than after a standard results page, at roughly 26% versus 16%.
Those are reported findings from one study of browsing behaviour, not a Google-published figure and not an Australian-specific one. Treat them as directional. But they match what a lot of owners are seeing in their own data, and they explain the shape of the problem: fewer clicks per impression, and more searches that end entirely.
On how sites become eligible to appear, Google's Search Central documentation states that summaries are generated with links to supporting web pages, that there is no separate ranking system for them, and that there is no markup or schema to opt into. Sites are eligible through normal Search indexing. The only controls Google names are exclusion controls — `nosnippet`, `max-snippet` and `data-nosnippet` — which keep content out.
So how do you actually get quoted?
Read that documentation literally and the answer follows from it. If eligibility runs through normal Search indexing, and there is no separate ranking system, then being cited is a by-product of ordinary indexing and ordinary ranking for the query. There is no second channel to enter.
That leaves three things inside your control, all of them supported directly by what Google publishes:
- Be indexable. If a page is not in the index, it cannot be linked to. Check coverage in Search Console for the pages that matter — service pages, suburb pages, pricing pages — not just the home page.
- Check you have not switched yourself off. `nosnippet`, `max-snippet` and `data-nosnippet` are the controls Google names for excluding content. These get added by developers, by security plugins, or by a previous agency, sometimes years ago and sometimes site-wide. Search your templates and your `robots` meta tags for them before assuming you are eligible.
- Rank for the underlying query. Since Google says there is no separate ranking system, the lever is the same one it has always been: being a strong result for the specific thing someone typed.
That is the extent of what the documentation supports. Anything beyond it — schema tricks, "AI optimisation" packages, submission services — is not described anywhere on that page. If an agency is offering a technical implementation that gets a business "into" Google's answers, ask which Google documentation it comes from.
The traffic loss is not uniform, and the fix differs by page
The most common mistake is treating this as one problem with one solution. It isn't. A page that exists to explain something and a page that exists to get a quote request are affected very differently, because the searches that land on them behave differently.
A question like "how much does rewiring an old Queenslander cost" can plausibly be answered on the results page. A search for an electrician who can come out on Thursday cannot — the searcher still has to pick someone, get a number, and make contact.
There is no published breakdown of this split for Australian queries, so nobody can hand over a percentage. But it is measurable in any individual business's own Search Console data, and that is the work worth doing this week rather than reading more agency blog posts about it.
Re-baseline the measurement before changing anything
Impressions up and clicks down is the expected pattern now. It is not evidence of a penalty, and reacting to it as though it were leads to expensive, pointless rebuilds.
A practical re-baseline:
- In Search Console, compare the last 6 months against the same 6 months a year earlier. Export by query and by page, not just the totals.
- Split queries into two buckets by hand: informational (how, what, why, cost of, best way to) and commercial or local (service plus suburb, "near me", brand names, "open now", quotes, bookings).
- Look at impressions, clicks and click-through rate separately for each bucket. Falling CTR on informational queries while commercial CTR holds is a very different situation from both falling together. The second one is a genuine ranking or relevance problem and needs different work.
- In GA4, stop treating organic sessions as the headline number. Track enquiry forms, phone taps, booking starts and quote requests per month. Sessions are now a worse proxy for demand than they used to be.
- Check referral sources for traffic from assistant tools and chat products. Some of it arrives as referral traffic, some arrives as direct, and some is not attributable at all. Do not assume a clean number exists.
If leads are steady while sessions fall, the business has a measurement problem, not a marketing problem. If leads are falling too, keep reading.
The local pack is still a separate fight
For a service business with a service area or a shopfront, the map results and business listing sit in their own part of the page, above and outside the area that has been absorbing clicks.
Google does not publish a full list of the signals behind local results, and its documentation on AI features does not address them at all. So treat the following as standard practitioner practice rather than confirmed ranking mechanics — most of it is worth doing because it helps a human choose you, whatever the algorithm does with it:
- Get the Google Business Profile complete and accurate: categories, service areas, hours including public holidays, services list, and photos that are actually recent.
- Build a steady habit of asking for reviews rather than a once-a-year push. Recency matters to a person reading them, whatever the ranking effect.
- Reply to reviews, including the bad ones, in plain language.
- Make sure the business name, address and phone number match across the website, the profile and any directories — at minimum so customers reach you.
- Answer the questions customers actually ask on the profile itself, not only on the website.
None of this is new. It is just harder to skip now.
What to do about content that used to earn traffic
If informational pages have lost their clicks, the honest question is whether they were ever earning revenue. Many were earning sessions. That is not the same thing.
For pages that fed real enquiries, the work is to make them worth the click: pricing ranges, real project examples, photos of actual jobs, named staff, service areas spelled out, and specifics a summary cannot compress. A generic 900-word explainer is the easiest thing in the world to summarise away.
For pages that only ever earned sessions, consider consolidating them rather than pouring more budget in.
Next steps
This week: check for stray `nosnippet` or `data-nosnippet` tags, run the Search Console split described above, and set up proper conversion tracking so lead volume is the headline number by next month. Then look at the SEO contract. If it promises rankings or sessions, it is measuring something that no longer maps to revenue, and that conversation is due at renewal.
Search features change frequently and Google's own documentation is the only reliable record of what is currently supported. Check it directly before acting on any tactic that claims otherwise.
Sources
- Pew Research Center — Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (22 July 2025)
- Google Search Central — AI features and your website
- Google (The Keyword) — Generative AI in Search (14 May 2024)