AI-powered search is quickly becoming the standard online experience, regardless of user preference. Over the past year, Google's AI-generated answers—branded as AI Overviews—have expanded dramatically. According to a recent analysis from market intelligence firm Similarweb, these overviews now appear in 43% of searches, up from just 15% a year ago. This marks a significant shift in how people consume web content. The report notes that what started as a simple AI layer layered over traditional search results has evolved into a core part of the search journey. Now, Google often drops users directly into AI Overviews, where they can continue exploring topics using the platform's more conversational AI Mode.

During this same timeframe, visits to AI Mode surged from 126 million in June 2025 to 279 million by May 2026. This data underscores a broader transformation in search behavior: users are moving away from an era when Google simply offered a list of blue links to click through and read. Instead, Google itself has become the destination, pulling answers and information directly from the websites it indexes. As a result, people are spending more time on Google's platform rather than using it merely as a springboard to other sites. Similarweb's figures show that the average length of Google searches has increased over the past year, suggesting that users are replacing short, keyword-based queries with longer, more natural conversational phrases designed for AI interaction.

This change has not been welcomed by publishers, who are losing referral traffic because AI citations often don't prompt clicks. Similarweb highlighted this trend last year, noting its particularly harsh impact on news publishers. More recently, tech infrastructure company Cloudflare introduced tools that let publishers fight back by blocking AI crawlers from their websites unless those AI companies pay for access to their content through Cloudflare's marketplace. Despite the fact that AI citations don't always lead users to click through, the number of AI responses containing citations has increased more than fivefold over the past year, according to Similarweb's latest report. Still, only 6.8% of U.S. ChatGPT desktop queries included citations as of May 2026, even with this growth. Some industries fare better—travel, retail, and sports queries tend to generate cited responses more frequently than others.

There is some hope for publishers, however. At least when it comes to ChatGPT, U.S. desktop referrals have improved following a May 7 search update. This update saw the proportion of visits landing on webpages more than double, rising from 25% in March 2026 to nearly 60% by May 30, 2026. This suggests that users are taking advantage of more prominent blue links within AI-driven search results when they are available.

Even with these improvements, the larger trend toward AI-powered search remains unchanged. Google is steadily transforming itself from a gateway to the broader web into a destination in its own right.