Google’s Nick Fox said that search’s AI features send billions of clicks to websites every week, alongside Google’s claim that search sends billions of clicks to the web daily.
Fox, senior vice president of knowledge and information at Google, shared the figures on LinkedIn and a shorter version on. The post answers a question Fox mentioned: whether AI in search would mean people never click through to websites. He marked the daily figure as something Google has already said. However, the weekly AI features figure does not have such a label.
He wrote:
“In fact, as we’ve said before, we continue to send billions of clicks to the web every day through search. And we designed our AI features in search to connect people to websites. In fact, we now send billions of clicks to websites every week through search AI features alone – and we’re just getting started.”
Neither figure includes a benchmark, denominator, or methodology, and Google had not released the data behind the weekly figure at the time of publication. Neither can be compared to your own site traffic.
The two figures now cited by Google
The daily figure comes from an older source. Liz Reid, vice president and head of research, used the same daily figure in a August 2025 Blog Postnoting that the total volume of organic clicks from Search was relatively stable compared to the previous year. However, she did not provide an exact figure or detailed breakdown.
The weekly figure relates specifically to AI features. Since both numbers are only given in billions, they do not indicate how the weekly number of AI features relates to the overall number of daily searches, nor what portion of search clicks come from AI features. A review of Google blog posts and executive statements before July 17 revealed no prior click-through figures broken down by AI features.
Search Console Content
Google introduces generative AI performance reporting in Search Console for a select group of website owners. These reports show impressions along with details like page, country, and device distribution, similar to the standard performance report. However, they do not include click data. SEJ highlighted this omission when Google published the opt-out option without providing the corresponding data.
Why it matters
You cannot audit this aggregate with the data you have. Fox’s figure describes the clicks on each site that Google reports to internal AI features, and your Search Console account reports your page impressions and stops there. AI reports don’t give you any click numbers to check theirs.
The Fox issue addresses the issue of clicking on a scale too broad for any individual site to identify. It shows what Google is willing to disclose about AI feature traffic, but doesn’t reveal anything specific about your site.
Looking to the future
Google says it will gradually include more metrics in AI performance reporting, but has not specified which metrics or when they will be added. Until that changes, the weekly figure is what Google offers in place of data. Google has the number. Websites have impressions.
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