AI Overviews Clicks Get Tested, Earnings Tell Two Stories

This week’s Pulse covers how AI Overviews have an effect on click on habits, what impartial analysis reveals, and what earnings stories from Google and Microsoft reveal about search income.

Right here’s what issues for you and your work.

Reid Repeats “Bounce Clicks” Argument On Bloomberg

Google’s head of Search, Liz Reid, advised Bloomberg’s Odd Heaps podcast that AI Overviews are lowering “bounce clicks” from writer pages. She has made variations of this argument in public appearances since final yr.

Key information: Reid described bounce clicks as visits the place customers rapidly click on a web page, get a truth, and depart, noting AI Overviews take away such visits relatively than deeper ones. Google hasn’t supplied information to confirm this, and third-party analyses present decrease click-through charges when AI Overviews are current.

Why This Issues

Reid’s rationalization has stayed constant throughout at the least three public appearances over the previous yr. The argument is that misplaced clicks had been low-value to start with, so publishers aren’t shedding the visits that matter. The issue is that Google nonetheless hasn’t shared the information behind that declare.

Till Google publishes site visitors or engagement metrics that separate bounce clicks from deeper visits, the reason is a story, not a discovering.

Learn our full protection: Google Pushes “Bounce Clicks” Explanation For AI Overview Traffic Loss

Subject Experiment Finds AI Overviews Lower Natural Clicks 38%

Researchers on the Indian College of Enterprise and Carnegie Mellon College revealed a working paper, which exams the results of AI Overviews on consumer habits in a randomized subject experiment.

Key information: The examine used a Chrome extension to assign 1,065 U.S. individuals to a few teams: regular Search, Search with out AI Overviews, and AI Mode. When AI Overviews appeared, natural clicks dropped 38%, and zero-clicks rose 33%. Eradicating AI Overviews didn’t have an effect on satisfaction, perceived high quality, or ease of discovering data.

Why This Issues

The authors describe their work as the primary randomized experiment to isolate the causal impact of AI Overviews on clicks. Prior research from Seer, Chartbeat, and Pew had been observational or correlational. The randomized design permits the researchers to say that AI Overviews precipitated the press discount, not simply that the 2 appeared collectively.

The satisfaction discovering places stress on Reid’s argument. If eradicating AI Overviews doesn’t cut back consumer satisfaction, it’s more durable to argue that the misplaced clicks had been primarily low-value visits.

Learn our full protection: Google’s AI Overviews Cut Clicks Without Satisfaction Gain: Report

Google Search Income Grew 19% In Q1

Alphabet reported Q1 2026 income of $109.9 billion. Google Search income hit $60.4 billion, up 19% yr over yr, accelerating from 17% development in This fall 2025.

Key information: CEO Sundar Pichai stated queries are at an all-time excessive and that AI experiences are tied to elevated Search utilization. Google Cloud crossed the $20 billion quarterly income mark, up 63%. Pichai advised analysts that extra details about Search will come at Google I/O in Might.

Why This Issues

The income development doesn’t settle the click-impact query. Google reported larger Search income and extra queries, however these numbers describe the advert enterprise, not the writer site visitors aspect. Greater income is according to each “clicks are advantageous” and “clicks are down, however advert yield per question is up.”

Google’s AI options could also be creating new advert alternatives, however the earnings information doesn’t present whether or not your pages are getting extra or fewer clicks from AI-influenced outcomes.

What Individuals Are Saying

Matthew Scott Goldstein, Unbiased Analyst/Advisor/Advisor at .msg, wrote on LinkedIn:

“That is what extraction at scale appears like dressed up as innovation. The identical content material fueling AI Overviews, Gemini solutions, and enterprise token quantity is the content material publishers have sued over, misplaced referral site visitors over, and watched get re-monetized inside a closed product.”

Learn our full protection: Google Search Revenue Grew 19% In Q1, Pichai Cites AI

Microsoft Says Bing Reached 1 Billion Month-to-month Lively Customers

Microsoft introduced throughout its Q3 FY2026 earnings name that Bing has reached 1 billion month-to-month lively customers for the primary time. CEO Satya Nadella revealed the determine alongside an 18% general income enhance to $82.9 billion.

Key information: Search advert income, excluding site visitors acquisition prices, grew 12% yr over yr. Edge maintained browser market share good points for the twentieth straight quarter. The phase that features Bing was down 1% general at $13.2 billion.

Why This Issues

The 1 billion MAU milestone is notable, however Bing’s international search share sits at about 5% per StatCounter’s March 2026 information. That hole suggests the MAU determine wants context. Microsoft hasn’t outlined frequency, overlap, or how AI-related Bing utilization is counted.

On the AI search measurement aspect, Microsoft previewed Quotation Share and three different Bing Webmaster Instruments options at website positioning Week earlier this month. When these ship, they may give Bing Webmaster Instruments customers a clearer approach to examine AI quotation visibility in opposition to rivals on Bing.

Learn our full protection: Microsoft Says Bing Reached 1B Monthly Active Users

Theme Of The Week: Everybody Is Measuring A Completely different Half Of Search

Each story this week is about the identical query requested from a unique angle: What’s AI doing to look site visitors?

Reid says the misplaced clicks had been low-value. The sphere experiment reveals that the misplaced clicks got here with none trade-off in consumer satisfaction. Google’s earnings say income is up 19%. Microsoft’s earnings say Bing hit a consumer milestone, but it surely nonetheless holds a 5% share. Every one measures one thing actual, and none of them measure the identical factor.

The hole between what platforms report and what publishers expertise doesn’t look like closing. The general public information wanted to reply the press query straight nonetheless isn’t out there. Per-query click on habits segmented by AI characteristic presence isn’t in any software that Google or Microsoft has shipped.

Prime Tales Of The Week:

Extra Sources:

Featured Picture: PeopleImages/Shutterstock; Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal