Google's New AI-Powered Search Changes Yield Few Clicks for Publishers

Google has introduced three new AI-powered search changes this week, but none of them have yielded significant clicks for publishers. The first change is that Search Console now reports AI visibility worldwide without any click metrics attached.

The second change involves AI Overviews expanding into full AI Mode-style answers for some queries, pushing organic results further down the page.

The third change is related to Gemini 3.8 Flash, which debuted inside AI Mode without citing sources on top-of-funnel queries, a bug that Google has confirmed and is working to fix.