Google says AI search sends billions of clicks. Pew watched 900 people search. Both are true — and that's the problem.

This week Google's head of Search took to LinkedIn to answer the traffic anxiety head-on. His words: Google is "now sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search alone" — and, he added, "we're just getting started." If you market a practice for a living, that sentence is aimed at you.

Hold it next to the only large independent measurement we have. Pew Research recruited 900 U.S. adults, tracked 68,879 real Google searches, and counted what people did when an AI summary appeared:

And the sources cited inside the AI summary? Clicked in 1% of visits. One in a hundred.

Here's the uncomfortable part: both numbers are honest. Google counts absolute clicks across billions of searches — a number so large it can grow while your share shrinks. Pew measures the rate — and the rate halves when the AI answers first. A quarter of AI-summary sessions end right there (26%, vs 16% without one). For an imaging center, that's a patient asking what an MRI costs, reading the machine's answer, and never seeing anyone's website — including yours.

My position, and it's the same one I'd defend to any practice: the click is quietly ceasing to be the unit of getting found. The answer itself is the new front door. The practices that win the next two years are the ones whose prices, locations, and services are correct at the sources the machines read — and who can prove it with their own numbers, not Google's.

Kept honest: Pew's tracking data is from March 2025 — the freshest independent measurement of its kind, but AI results have kept evolving since. Google's claim came in a LinkedIn post, not a data release, and Google does not publish per-site AI click data that would let anyone check it. Scale and share can both be true; that's exactly why you should track your own.

Sources (primary, verified today): Pew Research Center — all rates quoted from the study (900 U.S. adults, 68,879 searches, March 2025; 8% vs 15% result clicks; 1% clicks on summary sources; 26% vs 16% session endings) · Nick Fox (Google SVP, Search) LinkedIn post, July 2026 — "billions of clicks…every week through AI features in Search alone," quoted via Search Engine Land's report of the post. Caveat honored: the platform's claim is a statement, not a dataset.

Google's head of Search said this week that AI features send "billions of clicks to websites every week." Pew Research put trackers on 900 people's browsers and counted what actually happens.

When an AI summary appears: 8% of visits end with a click on a search result.
When there's no summary: 15%. Nearly double.
The sources cited inside the AI answer? Clicked 1% of the time.
And 26% of AI-summary sessions end right there — no click anywhere.

Here's the uncomfortable part: both numbers are honest. Google counts absolute clicks across billions of searches — a number that can grow while your share shrinks. Pew measures the rate, and the rate halves when the AI answers first.

For a healthcare practice, that's a patient asking what an MRI costs, reading the machine's answer, and never seeing anyone's website. Including yours.

What I'm telling my clients:
1. Judge visibility by branded search, direct visits, and calls — the signals that survive when the click doesn't.
2. Be the 1%: machines cite what's specific and checkable. Real prices, structured data, original numbers on your pages.
3. Own a channel no AI intermediates — your Business Profile, your reviews, your patient email list.

The click is quietly ceasing to be the unit of getting found. The answer itself is the new front door — and your facts had better be standing in it.

Sources: Pew Research (March 2025 tracking study), Nick Fox's LinkedIn post via Search Engine Land. The platform's claim is a statement; Pew's is a measurement. Track your own.

FIRST SOURCE · one verified original-source finding, composed for one reader · this edition: healthcare practice marketing — written for imaging-center owners