Google defended its artificial-intelligence powered search products after a series of outside reports suggested the tools are siphoning traffic away from publishers. In a blog post on 6 August, Liz Reid, the company’s vice president and head of Search, wrote that the total volume of organic clicks Google sends to websites has been “relatively stable year-over-year” and that the firm is now delivering “slightly more quality clicks,” defined as visits where users do not immediately bounce back to results. Reid said new features such as AI Overviews and the recently introduced AI Mode are encouraging people to ask longer, more complex questions and are showing “more links on the page than before,” creating additional chances for sites to be discovered. Google data, she added, shows a roughly 10 percent increase in searches involving its AI functions since their global rollout to more than 200 countries and 40 languages. The company’s assurances contrast with independent research. A July Pew Research Center analysis found that users clicked on a traditional result in only 8 percent of searches that included an AI summary, compared with 15 percent when no summary appeared. Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince has likewise said referral traffic from Google continues to fall, estimating the search engine now sends one visitor for every 18 pages it crawls, down from one in two a decade ago. Similarweb has reported that so-called zero-click news searches rose to 69 percent in May 2025. Google did not release underlying figures to substantiate its claims, but Reid argued that shifts in user behaviour, rather than the company’s AI integration, explain why some publishers are losing traffic while forums, video platforms and other sources of “authentic voices” gain prominence. She said Google remains “committed to prioritising the web” as it builds its next generation of search products.