If you run a site that gets visits from Google, you have probably noticed something odd over the last few months: more impressions, fewer clicks. It is not just you. It is the AI Overviews, those AI-generated summaries Google puts right at the top that answer the question before anyone clicks a result.
The numbers in Spain
Let us go with data, not gut feeling. AI Overviews now show up in 14-16% of searches in Spain, and that is no small thing: our country leads Europe in the penetration of these answers, ahead of the UK, France and Germany. Meanwhile organic traffic has dropped: from 52% down to 40.7% of the total. And on specific searches, falls of up to 89% have been seen, although the median sits around 10%, rising to 25% on non-news sites.
Translated: Google still shows your site, but many people no longer need to enter because the AI has handed them the answer up top. The click evaporates, and with it part of the traffic you took for granted.
It pays to read these percentages properly before making decisions. An 89% drop on a specific search sounds terrifying, but it is an extreme case, not the norm. The median sits around 10%, and on non-news sites it stays below 25%. It is a real hit, not a catastrophe. The sensible reaction is not to shut down your blog, but to understand which of your content is affected and which is not.
Google reacts
Google itself is aware of the problem, not least because half the internet lives off those clicks. On 6 May 2026 it announced five changes aimed at returning part of the lost traffic: they talk about recovering up to 20% of the visits that were vanishing. It is an explicit admission that the model had overshot.
But do not sit back waiting for Google to fix it. You have to do your part.
The figure that changes everything
Here is the key for a small business: 78% of the sources cited in AI Overviews were already in the organic top 10. In other words, the AI does not cite at random: it mostly cites those who already ranked well. But be careful with the easy reading. Being in the top 10 is no longer enough to win the click, because the click often never comes. The dual goal now is to rank and get cited inside the summary, with your name visible.
What a small Spanish business must do
First, understand which of your searches trigger an AI Overview. Not all of them do: informational ones ("what is", "how to") trigger it far more than transactional ones ("buy", "price", "near me"). If your business lives on purchase intent, the hit is smaller than it looks.
Second, work to be one of the cited sources: clear content, in short passages the AI can extract, with your own data, and an impeccable Google Business Profile if you are local. Third, do not abandon classic SEO, because almost eight in ten cited sources came from the top 10; falling out of the top 10 means falling out of the AI answer too.
And fourth, change the metric you measure success by. If you keep looking only at organic clicks, you will see a depressing and misleading picture. Start watching impressions, brand mentions and, above all, whether your customers arrive saying "I saw you when I asked Google/ChatGPT". That is the new visibility.
Neither panic nor denial
Search has changed and it is not going back. The small business that wins will not be the one that complains most about the death of the click, but the one that adjusts its strategy: content built to be cited, a solid Google Business Profile presence and a cool head to read the data. At Social Digital we help small firms in Madrid and across Spain do exactly that, without selling miracles.