Glenn Gabe finds AI Overviews France launch cut clicks on three sites

What changed

Glenn Gabe published Google Search Console data on 9 November 2026 showing that the AI Overviews France launch of 22 July 2026 cut clicks on three of the five sites he examined, while two saw little or no change. Gabe’s firm, G-Squared Interactive, provides SEO and AI Search consulting services.

Gabe filtered Search Console to France, checked the Generative AI report for the surge in AI impressions, then read clicks and click-through rate, the share of impressions ending in a click, in the Web Search report. He called 22 July 2026 “the clearest date we have for seeing the change roll out.”

On the first site, clicks from France fell from about 750 a day to about 400 and click-through rate from 2% to 1.1% overnight, while impressions stayed stable. The second site, on a sensitive topic Gabe classes as YMYL, fell from about 80 clicks a day to about 25, though its impressions had dropped about a week before the launch. Daily clicks from France on both sites:

The chart shows the first site losing almost half its clicks and the second more than two thirds.

The third site, also YMYL, saw click-through rate fall from 1.2% to 0.4% after the launch and a second drop in clicks around 13 August 2026. Gabe suggests Google was more cautious with sensitive queries at first and extended AI Overviews to more of them weeks later. Clicks on the fourth and fifth sites stayed largely stable. Five sites is a small sample.

Why it happened

Google began rolling out AI Overviews worldwide in May 2024 and launched them in France with AI Mode on 22 July 2026, Sébastien Missoffe, vice president and managing director of Google France, wrote. The French announcement also added a Search Console control that lets site owners in France decide whether their site appears in those features.

Google announced Search Console’s generative AI performance reports on 3 June 2026, showing impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page and by country, also counted in the overall Performance report. Google’s help page says the report reached all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026. Gabe wrote on 13 August 2026 that Search Console mixes AI Overviews and AI Mode data in with all other queries, so clicks from AI features cannot be read on their own.

What it changes for GEO

Brands that rank on French queries but sit outside the AI Overview lose clicks, because the buyer reads the answer on Google’s page first. The recommendation inside that answer is the most valuable moment in a purchase, and a brand missing from it loses the sale before any click. Click-through rate from France on two of the sites in Gabe’s Search Console data:

The chart shows click-through rate falling on both sites, while the site that started at 2% kept its impressions. How Google AI Overviews choose the pages they show now decides which French pages reach the buyer.

Ahrefs’ study of 963 domains in France, published on 16 September 2026, found click-through rate fell 3.4% across the panel in the nine days after launch and 23.1% for domains where more than 20% of queries trigger an AI Overview. Of those highly exposed domains, 82.2% lost click-through rate.

Sites whose queries trigger AI Overviews most often lose most, and publishers whose revenue depends on clicks lose with them, as People Inc.’s traffic decline it ties to AI search shows. Brands that buyers search by name lose least, since Gabe notes branded and navigational queries yield higher click-through rates. A brand the AI Overview recommends earns that later branded search.

Across Europe most brands start on the losing side. Agenzy’s 2026 study of 187,810 AI answers found the median European SMB brand appears in just 5% of AI answers about its own product category (n=90 tracked market projects, 2026-04 to 2026-08).

Analytics undercount what the answer does for a brand, because buyers who meet a brand in an AI Overview often return later through a branded search or a direct visit. Search Console counts AI impressions and folds AI clicks into ordinary results, so the reliable measure of revenue is asking every new customer how they found the company.

What to do

The head of marketing should start in Search Console this week: filter the Performance report to France, compare clicks and click-through rate in the weeks before and after 22 July 2026, and check the same weeks a year earlier, as Gabe advises, to rule out a seasonal dip. Then search each French query that lost the most clicks and note whether the AI Overview names the brand and what it says about it.

Next, rewrite the pages that answer those queries so their title and opening carry the buyer’s words, the method set out in how to get your pages cited in Google AI Overviews. Check the result monthly with a required “How did you hear about us?” field on every lead form, as described in measuring AI search revenue when analytics credits Google.