- Approximately 93% of Google AI Mode sessions end without the user clicking on any external website, compared to 34% for traditional Google Search.
- AI Mode usage grew 4x in two months, from 0.25% of sessions in early May 2025 to over 1% by early July.
- Users type longer queries in AI Mode (7.22 words on average) but conduct fewer searches per session (2-3 versus 5+ in traditional search).
- The study analyzed 69 million Google Search sessions from U.S. desktop users between May 1 and July 5, 2025.
What Happened
A study by Semrush analyzing 69 million Google Search sessions found that approximately 93% of Google AI Mode interactions end without the user clicking through to any external website. The research, published on the Semrush Blog, examined U.S. desktop user behavior from May 1 to July 5, 2025.
For comparison, traditional Google Search without AI Overview features produces a zero-click rate of roughly 34%. Google Search with AI Overviews reaches about 43%. AI Mode pushes that figure to 92-94%, meaning only 6-8% of AI Mode sessions generate any external website visits at all.
The study also found that AI Mode usage grew approximately fourfold over the two-month observation period, from 0.25% of all search sessions in early May to just over 1% by early July 2025. Users engage in roughly one AI Mode session per day on average.
Why It Matters
The data quantifies a concern that publishers, marketers, and SEO professionals have raised since Google began integrating AI-generated answers into search results. If AI Mode becomes the default search experience, the vast majority of searches would produce no traffic to external websites.
Barry Schwartz, CEO of web development firm RustyBrick, noted the shift in how visibility should be measured. “You look at overall visibility, brand mentions” rather than traditional click metrics, Schwartz said, reflecting a growing recognition that AI search changes the economics of online publishing.
Even at just 1% of total search sessions, the growth trajectory is significant. Google processes billions of searches daily, so a small percentage translates to millions of AI Mode sessions where publishers receive no traffic. The fourfold growth in two months suggests adoption is accelerating, not plateauing.
Technical Details
The Semrush researchers, led by Luke Harsel, Anna Yudina, and Aleksandr Drozdov, found measurable differences in how users behave in AI Mode compared to traditional search. Average query length in AI Mode is 7.22 words, compared to 4.0 words in standard Google Search. This suggests users treat AI Mode as a conversational tool, providing more context in each query.
However, AI Mode queries remain notably shorter than typical ChatGPT prompts, which average 23 or more words. This indicates that users still approach Google AI Mode with search-engine habits rather than fully conversational expectations.
Users conduct fewer searches per AI Mode session, typically 2-3 queries, compared to 5 or more in traditional search. This pattern indicates that AI Mode answers tend to satisfy the user’s information need more completely on the first attempt, reducing the need for follow-up searches and query refinements.
The study focused exclusively on U.S. desktop users, which represents only a portion of Google’s total search volume. Mobile behavior, international markets, and different query categories may show different patterns. The researchers noted this as a limitation of the current dataset.
Who’s Affected
Content publishers that depend on Google Search traffic face the most direct impact. News sites, how-to publishers, recipe blogs, and informational websites derive a substantial portion of their audience from organic search clicks. A 93% zero-click rate in AI Mode would drastically reduce that traffic source if AI Mode adoption grows beyond its current 1% share.
SEO professionals and digital marketers need to reconsider how they measure success. Traditional metrics like click-through rate and organic traffic may become less relevant as AI-generated answers satisfy user queries directly on the search results page. Brand mentions within AI-generated responses could become a new metric of interest.
Advertisers who rely on Google’s search advertising ecosystem also face uncertainty. If users get answers without clicking, the opportunities for ad impressions on destination pages decline, potentially shifting more ad spend to Google’s own platform and away from publisher-side monetization.
What’s Next
AI Mode remains in its early adoption phase at roughly 1% of search sessions. Google has not announced plans to make AI Mode the default experience, and the company continues to show traditional search results alongside AI features. However, the 4x growth rate over just two months suggests adoption is accelerating. Publishers and marketers should monitor whether Google expands AI Mode to mobile and international markets, where the traffic impact could be substantially larger than what the current U.S. desktop data shows.
