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    AI Mode “does not drive traffic”. So what does being named get you?

    Reddit’s CEO says Google’s AI Mode “does not drive traffic”. Pew found 8 in 100 people click a result when an AI summary shows. What to measure instead.

    Mohamed Ashraf

    Marketing Specialist7 min read

    • What this covers: What Reddit told investors about Google’s AI Mode, what Pew measured about clicks, why Search Console can’t show you the gap, and three things to track instead
    • Who this is for: Founders and marketing leads watching their search traffic and wondering where it went
    • Time to act: About an hour a month for the three checks in this post
    • Related pages: What is GEO?, GEO metrics, Why AI can read your site and still never cite you

    “The reality is the AI Mode does not drive traffic, not for us and not to anybody as far as I know.” That’s Steve Huffman, Reddit’s co-founder and CEO, on the company’s third-quarter earnings call on 29 October 2026 (The Motley Fool, call transcript). On the same call he said Google is crawling Reddit “as hard as ever”. If a site Google reads that closely can’t get visits out of AI Mode, a startup shouldn’t plan on them either. What’s left to win is the sentence that names you.

    What did Reddit tell investors?

    Huffman described a drop, a cause and a gap, in his own words:

    • The drop: “Our search referral traffic was down meaningfully in Q3 with the decline accelerating later in the quarter.” And: “During October, we have seen that search traffic has dropped by more than 1 million referrals on average per week.”
    • The cause: “The biggest one is the AI Overviews or AI Mode.”
    • The gap: “Also, Google is crawling us as hard as ever.”

    He added that if current trends hold, Reddit’s total daily active uniques “could fall in Q4 by a low double-digit percentage”. This is one company describing its own numbers to investors, so read it as Reddit’s account. But it lines up with the best independent data we have.

    How many people still click when an AI summary shows?

    Pew Research Center tracked the Google searches of 900 US adults in March 2025: 68,879 unique searches, of which 12,593 (18%) showed an AI summary (Pew Research Center).

    What people did after a Google search With an AI summary Without one
    Clicked a traditional result 8% of visits 15% of visits
    Ended their browsing session there 26% of visits 16% of visits

    And on pages with a summary, people clicked a link inside the summary on just 1% of visits.

    So when an AI summary shows, about half as many people click a result, and more of them stop right there. The answer was the last thing they read.

    Two limits to keep in mind: this is US data from March 2025, and it measured AI Overviews, not AI Mode. Our read: AI Mode gives a longer, fuller answer than an AI Overview, so there’s little reason to expect it sends more people out.

    Why can’t you see this in Search Console?

    Two rules in Google’s own documentation explain it.

    1. An AI Overview counts as one position. In the Performance report, “An AI Overview occupies a single position in search results,” and every link inside it gets that same position (Search Console Help). Clicks on those links are counted, but they sit in the same totals as every other click.
    2. The AI report shows impressions only. The generative AI performance report, rolled out to all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026, shows how often your URLs “appeared in generative AI features in Search and Discover”, by page, country, device and date (Google Search Central Blog). It doesn’t show clicks.

    Our read: you can now see that AI showed a link to your page. You can’t see what the answer said about you, or whether it named you in the text at all. And an AI impression with no click doesn’t look like a win anywhere in your reports.

    Microsoft says the same thing plainly in its guidelines for Bing and Copilot: “A decline in clicks does not always indicate a loss of visibility.” (Bing Webmaster Guidelines)

    So what does a founder get from being named?

    Our read: the mention is the result now. When a buyer asks AI what to buy or who to hire, the answer is often the last thing they read before they decide. A name in that answer reaches them. A link under it mostly doesn’t: 1 visit in 100, in Pew’s data.

    Huffman pointed at what happens next: “Google is teaching people that if you want to come to Reddit, you need to come to Reddit.” Our read: the same goes for you. A buyer who reads your name in an answer can come straight to you, by typing your name or your web address. Those visits won’t show up as AI referrals. They show up as branded searches and direct visits. Nobody has published how often that happens yet, so treat it as something to watch, not a promise.

    What to track from now on

    Three checks, once a month.

    1. Are you named?

    Write down ten questions a buyer would ask before choosing someone like you, such as “best [service] for [type of startup] in [city]”. Ask each one in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini. Record whether your name appears in the answer text, and which names appear instead.

    2. How often, across runs?

    The same question can get a different answer twice in a row. Ask each question three times and count how many of the three answers name you. That count is your number. A single screenshot isn’t.

    3. Your AI impressions, next to your name

    Open the generative AI performance report in Search Console and note which pages appeared, and how often, month on month. Put two numbers next to it: searches that contain your brand name, from the regular Performance report, and direct visits, from your analytics. If AI shows you more and those two rise with it, being named is working, even with no AI clicks.

    Common mistakes

    • Reading a falling click count as falling visibility.
    • Reading a high average position as a classic top ranking, when an AI Overview link can share the overview’s single position.
    • Judging AI visibility from one answer, on one day, in one tool.
    • Waiting for AI referral traffic to prove the channel works.
    • Tracking impressions without checking what the answer actually says about you.

    What we don’t know yet

    • How many buyers who read a name in an AI answer later search for it or visit directly.
    • Whether Google will add clicks to the generative AI performance report.
    • Whether AI Mode clicks behave like the AI Overview clicks Pew measured in 2025.

    We’ll update this guide as Google, Pew or others publish more.

    Frequently asked questions

    Does Google AI Mode send traffic to websites?

    Some. Clicking a link to an external page in AI Mode counts as a click in Search Console. But Reddit’s CEO told investors on 29 October 2026 that “the AI Mode does not drive traffic, not for us and not to anybody as far as I know.”

    How many people click a result when Google shows an AI summary?

    In Pew Research Center’s study of 900 US adults and 68,879 searches in March 2025, people clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary on 1% of visits.

    Can I see AI Overview and AI Mode traffic in Search Console?

    You can see impressions. The generative AI performance report shows how often your URLs appeared in AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative features in Discover. It doesn’t report clicks.

    What should a startup measure instead of clicks from AI?

    Whether AI names you for the questions your buyers ask, how often it names you across repeated runs, and your AI impressions by page, tracked next to branded searches and direct visits.

    Why does a page show a high position in Search Console when it isn’t a top result?

    An AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, and every link inside it gets that position. A page cited in an AI Overview near the top of the results can show a high position without ranking there as a classic result.

    Be the name in the answer

    The click is leaving. The mention stays. Track whether AI names you, how often, and what happens to your branded searches when it does. If you’d like help, book a free AI visibility call.

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    Sources