The click is dying, and now we have proof

I spent three weeks in Milan this winter chasing clicks. So let me tell you what one is worth.

Eighty-six live shots from the Olympics. A daily newsletter I wrote before dawn most mornings, which grew readership 52% over our Paris coverage and pushed click-through to NBC Boston’s digital stories up 369%. Nineteen million impressions. I know precisely what it costs to earn a click, because I spent a month of my life earning them one at a time.

Which is why this study stopped me. In January, researchers ran a pre-registered field experiment — 1,065 real people, a Chrome extension, randomized groups. One group got Google as normal. The other had AI Overviews hidden. That’s the whole design, and it’s the only reason it matters more than the dozen dashboards in your inbox.

Hiding AI Overviews raised outbound clicks from 0.38 per search to 0.61. AI Overviews cause a 38% drop. Zero-click searches went from 54% to 72%. And users reported no difference in satisfaction — they aren’t happier, they just aren’t leaving. Pew found the same in the field: 8% click-through with an AI summary, 15% without.

I spent twenty years learning how to earn the click. The job now is to be named in the answer that replaced it.