AI Overviews in France: the click disappears, demand stays

Google launched AI Overviews in France on 22 July 2026, two years after the United States. You type a question, a summary appears at the top of the page with a handful of links to its sources. For part of those searches, the journey ends there.

The change does not reduce public interest. It reduces the share of that interest that leaves a trace on the website of the organisation being searched for.

What the Pew Research Center measured

The Pew Research Center analysed the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025: 68,879 Google searches, of which 12,593 displayed a summary. When a summary appeared, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits. Without one, in 15%. Links cited inside the summary itself were clicked in just 1% of visits.

Pew also found that 26% of visits with a summary ended on the results page, against 16% without. The question was asked, the answer was read, and nobody went further.

These are US figures. They show a direction, not a rate to transpose directly onto the French market.

AI Overviews in France: fewer clicks, not fewer searches

Google, meanwhile, does not describe search as shrinking. In its third-quarter 2025 results, Alphabet said AI Overviews drive meaningful query growth. In the fourth quarter, according to the company, Search saw “more usage than ever before.”

The two findings do not contradict each other. People search as much, or more. They click less. The click disappears, demand does not.

What a club's analytics will no longer see

For a sports organisation, many of the public's questions are ones a summary can answer without a visit: kick-off time, how to reach the venue, ticket prices, how to sign up. Every one of those answers read on the results page is a sign of interest that will never appear in the site's statistics.

Analytics always had this limit: it tells you who arrived, never what people thought before coming, nor why they did not come. With summaries, it now also counts a shrinking fraction of those who looked you up. A fall in traffic can therefore sit alongside stable or rising demand.

What remains readable is what people type, before they click or even if they never do. A query is dated, located and phrased by the public itself. That is the measure described in our piece on search intent versus stated preference, and it does not depend on the click.

Three questions before concluding that interest has dropped

• Query volume naming the club, competition or event: has it fallen, or only traffic?
• Phrasing: more practical questions, fewer brand searches?
• Geography: has demand moved towards areas the site does not capture?

Other measurement approaches are covered in our methodology section.

For a digital marketing lead at a club, federation or event organiser, the decision is concrete: before cutting a budget or revising a programme because traffic is down, compare that traffic with the volume of searches that name the organisation. If queries hold and visits fall, the problem is not the public's interest but the way it is being captured.