Google's AI features drove about 21% of one site's clicks, a four-week opt-out test estimates

AI Overviews and AI Mode accounted for roughly 21% of the clicks Zyppy SEO's website got from Google Search, according to an estimate by SEO consultant Cyrus Shepard, the company's founder. He removed the site from Google's AI features for four weeks, from September 1 to September 29, then compared the numbers. Factor in a small gain in regular results, which he credits to the site's presence in AI answers, and the share tied to those features climbs to 23%.

The experiment was reported by Search Engine Journal in a story published November 9, based on what Shepard shared in his newsletter. Shepard himself cautions that this is a single test on a single site and asks readers to treat the results "more as a directional gauge than as absolute Google truth," without assuming they apply to other sites.

How the site left Google's AI features

Shepard used the generative AI control for Search in Search Console to opt the site out. He says the site disappeared from the AI features in under an hour. Before that, it was getting 500 to 1,000 impressions a day in AI Overviews and AI Mode, about 10% of all the site's impressions in Search.

Google's help center says an opt-out usually takes a few days and is not used as a signal for ranking or for inclusion elsewhere in Search. Shepard showed a query where the site stayed at number one in the regular results but no longer appeared in the AI features, not even as a link. After 28 days, once he allowed it again, AI impressions came back almost as quickly.

How the math worked

Search Console logs a click on a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode as a regular click in the Performance report, with no way to separate the two. So Shepard compared total clicks during the 28 days out of the AI features with the following 28 days back in, using the same queries and positions to reduce the impact of ranking changes.

The comparison pointed to a click-through rate of about 0.9% on AI impressions, with a reasonable range of 0.7% to 1.1%. Across Search as a whole, the site averages about 0.4%. With 10% of impressions and a higher click-through rate, the AI features would have generated about 21% of clicks. Shepard notes that Zyppy has worked hard to earn AI citations, which may explain the result.

He also saw a higher click-through rate on organic results when the site appeared in AI Overviews, a small effect that was stronger on pages with more AI visibility. Shepard calls it a halo effect and says no one knows for sure what causes it, with brand reinforcement as a likely explanation. Zyppy will keep the site in the AI features, which he considers "the only reasonable thing to do."

What this means for brand and AEO teams

The generative AI performance report shows impressions but not clicks, and Shepard says other sites may see bigger or smaller numbers. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority has given Google until December 3 to provide publishers with aggregated impressions, clicks and click-through rates for its AI features, plus three more months for page-level controls. Until then, anyone thinking about opting out of AI features may be giving up traffic they still can't measure.