More links inside AI Overviews do not mean more clicks to your site

Two posts published this week show more links appearing inside AI Overviews, and Search Console's own counting rules show why that growth will not show up as more clicks to your site.

What two posts showed

Peec AI shared a chart on September 21 tracking the share of AI Overviews that carry an external link inside the answer text, averaged daily from August 25 to September 20. The line sits near zero through September 10, jumps sharply around September 11, and reaches 26.2% by September 20. Peec did not disclose the number of queries sampled, the markets or devices covered, or how it distinguishes a link inside the answer text from a citation card or an end of response suggestion.

The same day, Gagan Ghotra posted an 18 second recording of himself tapping bold, underlined text inside an AI Overview. It opened a conversation in AI Mode instead of a webpage.

How Search Console counts the destination

Google's help page says a click on a link to an external page inside an AI Overview counts as a click. A link that runs a new Google query, a query refinement, counts as neither a click nor an impression. Following one, Google says, is "essentially performing the new query shown in the search terms box."

It is not clear whether the anchor link in Ghotra's recording is treated as a query refinement. Google's help page covers the general rule and describes the AI Mode follow up question separately. It does not address this specific link type.

Search Console's generative AI performance report, rolled out to all sites worldwide on August 31, only shows impressions, split by page, country, date or device. It carries no clicks and no click through rate, and it is a subset of the Web search performance report, not an addition to it.

Why it matters

More links inside the answer does not mean more traffic out. A link to your page can register as a click. A link into AI Mode keeps the session with Google, and depending on how Search Console classifies it, might not register as an impression either.

We see the same pattern on our own client dashboards: generative AI impressions keep climbing, and that report has no click column to check the growth against. Anyone trying to size up what these links are worth needs the Web performance clicks report alongside the generative AI impressions report. Neither one alone answers the question.