Google Steers More Search Users Into AI Chat as Websites Face Fewer Clicks

A Google search can now end in a conversation before a person opens a website. In a September 29 account, TIME describes how Google is making AI Mode easier to reach from Search, including a more visible follow-up prompt and an AI Mode button on the homepage for many users. The convenience for searchers poses a difficult question for sites that depend on visits from Google: will people still click through?

A shorter route from results to chat

The route starts with an AI Overview, Google’s generated summary above conventional search links. A person can select “Ask Anything” to continue in AI Mode and ask follow-up questions. TIME reports that this prompt is often no longer tucked behind “Show More.” It also says Google has put an AI Mode button on the Search homepage for many users. These are changes to how people enter the tool, not a new launch of AI Mode.

Google began rolling out AI Overviews in 2024. They remain distinct from AI Mode: an Overview answers on the results page, while AI Mode invites an extended exchange. Similarweb data cited by TIME puts Overviews in 40% of U.S. Google searches. The more prominent prompts matter because they give some of those searchers a direct next step into chat.

Google says AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly active users worldwide. In its May account of U.S. usage, the company said queries had more than doubled every quarter since launch. Google also found that the average AI Mode query was three times as long as a traditional Search query. These company-reported figures do not show how many people entered through the newly prominent buttons and prompts.

An answer without the visit

Strategy adviser Kevin Indig told TIME that people use AI Mode for tasks such as planning trips, building study guides and brainstorming ideas. He said they are less likely to leave the conversation to check another site. That is the behavioral shift publishers must contend with: a searcher can get an answer, ask another question and keep moving without visiting the source.

The clearest clickthrough figure in TIME’s account concerns AI Overviews, not AI Mode. An Ahrefs study found that Overviews were associated with a 58% lower clickthrough rate to top-ranking search results. The figure signals pressure on links when an answer appears in Search, but it does not measure the effect of the AI Mode homepage button or show that every lost click went to chat.

News traffic offers another warning, with a similar limit. Similarweb data analyzed by Axios showed U.S. visits to roughly 100 leading news sites falling from above 70 million in 2024 to 47.6 million this July. TIME cautions that the decline cannot be attributed entirely to AI. The numbers describe a worsening position for publishers, not a clean accounting of what Google’s interface changes caused.

Google’s case for keeping links

Google says AI Mode gets people the information they want faster without severing their connection to the web. Robby Stein, its vice president of product for Search, told TIME that a healthy ecosystem of publishers and creators is important to Google. Stein said the company has substantially increased the number of links in AI Mode’s content trays and that users want to hear from experts and verify what they see.

Stein also described AI Mode as an easy entry point for older users encountering AI for the first time. They can expand an answer and ask a follow-up question within a familiar product. That helps explain why a homepage button is consequential: Google does not need someone to seek out a separate chatbot to introduce conversational search.

The unresolved question is whether a link inside an AI answer prompts a visit as readily as a conventional search result. Google points to more links; Indig describes users who stay in the conversation. For publishers, the difference between being cited and being visited is the difference that counts.