Data from Pew, Ahrefs and SparkToro plus figures for Uzbekistan: how much Google and Yandex AI answers cut clicks to websites, which pages lose traffic first, and what a small company can do to keep its customers.
Someone asks Google or Yandex a question, reads a ready-made answer right on the results page and closes the tab. They never reach a website. A couple of years ago this mostly affected simple questions like exchange rates; now AI answers also appear for queries that businesses used to rely on for customers. Here is what the research says, how to check whether your site has been affected, and what a small company can actually do.
What the numbers say
The most detailed studies so far come from the US and Russia. What applies to Uzbekistan is covered in the next section.
- In March 2025, Pew Research Center analysed the real searches of 900 adult users in the US. When a Google AI summary appeared on the results page, people clicked a regular link in 8% of cases, compared with 15% without one. Links inside the AI summary itself were clicked in 1% of cases. After a page with an AI summary, people were also more likely to end their browsing session: 26% versus 16%.
- In February 2026, Ahrefs compared 300,000 queries from December 2023 and December 2025. When an AI Overview appears above the results, the click-through rate of the top position is on average 58% lower. In its study a year earlier the gap was 34.5%, so the effect is growing.
- In June 2026, SparkToro used Similarweb panel data to estimate that 68% of Google searches in the US from January to April 2026 ended without a click to any website. In 2024 the figure was about 60%, and in 2019 it was 49%.
- For Yandex, Ashmanov & Partners found that from August 2025 to January 2026 the share of Alice answer sources from outside the top 10 results fell from 40% to 10%. Brand Analytics estimated that news sites lost 33 to 38% of their organic traffic in 2025 because of AI answers in Yandex and Google. Yandex disputes this and says search traffic from Yandex grew for most large media outlets.
What is happening in Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan has 33.1 million internet users, or 89% of the population (DataReportal, October 2025). According to StatCounter, in September 2026 Google accounted for 76.3% of searches in the country, Yandex for 21.5% and Bing for 1.7%. For most local sites, changes at Google matter most, but Yandex, with a fifth of the market, cannot be ignored either.
AI answers already work here in both search engines:
- Google AI Overviews are available in Uzbekistan, and Uzbek is on the list of supported languages.
- Google opened AI Mode to Uzbekistan in October 2025 and added support for the Uzbek language in February 2026.
- On 29 July 2025, Yandex launched AI-powered search in Uzbekistan that answers in Uzbek and Russian. It builds an answer from several sources, shows it above the regular links and indicates where the information came from.
Nobody has yet published a separate study of click losses in Uzbekistan. But since all of these AI answers work here, including in Uzbek, the figures from the US and Russia show where local search is heading.
There is good news too. According to Yandex's research, at the time its AI search launched only 23% of sites in the .uz zone could provide information in Uzbek. When someone asks a question in Uzbek, the AI answer needs Uzbek sources, and there are few of them. A site with a good Uzbek version has a better chance of appearing in such an answer with a link to it. We covered how to build an Uzbek version properly in our article on multilingual websites.
Who is hit hardest
AI answers appear more often for long questions. According to Pew, queries of 10 or more words produced an AI summary 53% of the time, while one- or two-word queries did so only 8% of the time. So informational pages lose traffic first: "what is", "how to choose", "how much does it cost on average", "what is the difference". If your blog drew traffic on questions like these without turning it into enquiries, the drop will be noticeable.
Queries after which a person wants to do something suffer less: book, buy, call a technician, or find a company by name or near home. An AI answer can explain how to choose a dentist, but it cannot book you an appointment. Where a specific provider is needed, people still click through.
How to tell whether your site has been affected
- Open the Performance report in Google Search Console and compare the last three months with the same period a year ago. The typical sign is that impressions hold steady or grow while clicks fall.
- Split your pages into informational ones (articles, answers to questions) and commercial ones (services, prices, contacts). If mainly the former are falling, that is the effect of AI answers. If everything is falling, the cause may lie elsewhere: technical errors, competitors, seasonality.
- Keep in mind that Google includes AI Mode data in the overall Search Console figures, but you cannot filter it out separately, just as with AI Overviews.
- Look at enquiries and calls, not only visits. Traffic to informational pages may fall while the number of enquiries stays the same: people who are ready to buy still visit the site.
What a small business can do
Focus on the pages that bring in customers
A separate page for each service with prices, timelines, photos of your work and a clear enquiry button is more useful than a dozen general articles. Add districts and cities if you travel to customers: an AI answer will not replace "air conditioner repair in Chilanzar" the way it replaces "how to clean an air conditioner". We build pages like these into the site structure as part of website development.
Complete your map listings
Google Business Profile and Yandex Maps appear for "near me" queries and searches by company name, and AI answers also take addresses, opening hours and reviews from them. Check that your details are consistent and up to date everywhere and that the listing links to your site.
Offer what AI cannot retell
AI can summarise general advice, but it cannot reproduce your actual prices, a cost calculator, online booking, fresh photos of finished work or reviews from specific customers. The more of this your site has, the more reasons a person has to visit it.
Stay a source for AI answers
According to Ashmanov & Partners, up to 90% of the sources in Alice's answers come from the top 10 results. So ordinary SEO has not gone anywhere: you need to reach the top first, and then you have a chance of appearing in an AI answer with a link to you. We covered how to write pages that AI cites in "How AI Is Changing Search", and short, precise answers for this are easy to collect in an FAQ section.
Get people searching for you by name
AI answers rarely intercept searches that include your company name: the person is looking for you specifically. Reviews, word of mouth, a Telegram channel, signage and business cards with your website address all increase the number of such searches.
Build channels that do not depend on search
A Telegram channel, a customer database, repeat sales and mailings work regardless of what Google shows tomorrow. We wrote about combining a channel, a bot and a website in "Telegram Channel or Website".
Count enquiries, not visits
Set up goals in Yandex Metrica or Google Analytics for form submissions, phone clicks and Telegram clicks. Then you will see which pages bring in customers and will not worry about falling traffic on articles that never sold anything anyway.
What not to do
- Block AI search bots in robots.txt to "protect your content". It will not bring traffic back, and you will disappear from those assistants' answers along with the link to your site.
- Publish hundreds of generated articles to make up for lost clicks. These are exactly the texts that AI answers replace most easily.
- Abandon the website altogether. Even if someone got their answer from AI, before calling or paying they almost always check the company: they open the site and look at prices, reviews and contacts.
Frequently asked questions
Does a website still need a blog?
Yes, but for a different purpose. Articles written for traffic on general questions work less and less well. Articles that answer your customers' pre-purchase questions, show expertise and lead to service pages are still useful, and they give AI assistants material to cite.
Does this affect websites in Uzbekistan?
Yes. Google, with about 76% of the market, and Yandex, with about 21%, both show AI answers in Uzbekistan, including in Uzbek. How much a particular site has been affected can only be seen in its own statistics in Search Console and Yandex Webmaster.
How much traffic will I lose?
It depends on which queries brought people in. A site with a blog on general topics may lose a noticeable share of visits, while a site that gets customers through "service + city" queries and searches by company name may barely notice the change.
Is SEO still worth investing in if clicks are falling?
Yes, if you invest in the right pages. AI answer sources mostly come from the top positions, so without proper SEO you lose both regular clicks and mentions in AI answers.
Want to know whether AI answers have affected your site and which pages to rework first? Get in touch: we will go through your Search Console and Webmaster data and suggest where to focus.
