More than eight in ten people have claimed they still click on a website link after reading an AI Overview in Google search results in a new survey.
Just 4.4% of people said they never go on to click a website link in the search results after an AI summary is generated.
Some 13.3% of people claimed to do so every time, 30.5% said they often do, 41.5% said they sometimes do and 10.3% said they rarely click through.
The findings came in a survey of 1,000 US adults carried out via Pollfish for digital marketing agency NP Digital.
The survey was carried out in May 2025, so views may have changed since then. However, the survey provides a snapshot of how the general US population felt about Google’s AI Overviews a year after the feature first launched.
A third told the survey that they thought they were visiting fewer websites because of AI-generated summaries in search results, while half (51.9%) said they had not noticed their habits changing in this way.
The respondents were split on whether they trust AI Overviews more than regular search results.
Some 41.1% said they trust AI Overviews about the same as the traditional snippets and links in search results.
But 31% trust AI Overviews more (10.8% much more and 20.2% slightly more) while 27.9% trust the AI summaries less (18.2% slightly less and 9.7% much less).
The proportion who trust AI Overviews less roughly matches with the number saying they had noticed “major errors” in AI Overviews (25.3%) since May 2024.
Half of these errors were defined as inaccuracies, with 20.6% saying the answers were outdated and 21% saying the content they were given was irrelevant for their query.
Overall 29.8% of respondents said they were very satisfied with Google AI Overviews, 36.6% were somewhat satisfied and 25.1%. Some 5% were somewhat dissatisfied and 3.5% were very dissatisfied, giving a net satisfaction rate of 57.9%.
Despite this, the majority said they would turn of AI Overviews for at least some queries if they had the option.
Some 17.7% would turn off AI Overviews for all queries while 38% would turn them off for some.
Asked how they feel about the quality of Google search results overall including standard organic and paid results and featured snippets since AI Overviews launched in May last year, 24.4% answered that they were great, 45.3% said they were good, 24.7% said moderate, 3.1% said poor and 2.5% said very poor.
Respondents were also asked what topics they were more likely to turn to social search engines like Tiktok to find out about than traditional search engines like Google.
“Current events and news” was the topic third most likely to see people choose alternative search engines, with 33.8% saying they were more likely to use platforms like Tiktok to look up information.
It was behind only food and cooking (42.7% said they were more likely to use Tiktok or similar platforms) and entertainment and pop culture (36.3%).
Topics more likely to be researched through Google included education and exams (8.7%), business and entrepeneurship (8.7%) and parenting and family (9.2%).
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