846,000 Google Searches Reveal How AI Overviews Are Changing User Behavior via @sejournal, @ericvanbuskirk

Users with AI Overviews scroll back up the page nearly twice as often. What that back-scrolling behavior means for how you write your search listings. The post 846,000 Google Searches Reveal How AI Overviews Are Changing User Behavior appeared...

May 26, 2026 - 15:16

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846,000 Google Searches Reveal How AI Overviews Are Changing User Behavior via @sejournal, @ericvanbuskirk

If a user types your brand name into Google or Chrome, you might reasonably assume they are about to visit your website. Google has always been a place people pass through on the way to somewhere else, but AI Overviews are changing how long that passage takes, and what happens during it.

To assess these changes, I analyzed 846,000 U.S.-based Google Search sessions from anonymized clickstream data for February and March 2026.

We measured what click and ranking data cannot capture: what people read, skim, and scan on the search results page before they make decisions. Where does their cursor travel? How far do they scroll? Do they reverse direction? And how does all of that change when Google’s AI Overview is present?

Cursor tracking is a useful proxy for attention because cursor position often aligns with gaze during active reading and decision tasks, but it is less reliable during passive, distracted, or idle browsing. Cursor positions were sampled at one-second intervals during search sessions, up to 60 samples per session.

What we found is the search result preview carries more weight for brands. Where AI Overviews are shown, users stay longer on Google as they read, revisit, and compare listings carefully.

Image from author, May 2026

1. AI Overviews Keep People On Google Far Longer, Regardless of Why They Searched

We tracked how many users were still actively engaged with the SERP at each three-second interval from the moment their search appeared, from 3 to 21 seconds.

We did this separately for five types of searches: informational, local, navigational, transactional, and video, and compared what happened when an AI Overview was present versus absent.

Image from author, May 2026

The result was striking. Without an AI Overview, searchers behave like five distinct audiences. With one, they behave like one audience.

For brands, the time between a user seeing your listing and deciding what to do with it has expanded considerably. That extended window is a challenge because Google holds attention longer before releasing it. It is also an opportunity because users who click after spending 15 or 20 seconds evaluating the page are likely making a more considered choice.

Has AIO	Search Type	3s	6s	9s	12s	15s	18s	21s
No	Informational	70.2%	51.5%	40.3%	33.0%	27.7%	24.2%	21.6%
Yes	Informational	92.2%	80.2%	70.4%	62.3%	55.7%	50.3%	45.4%
No	Local	81.8%	65.6%	54.1%	46.3%	40.2%	35.7%	32.3%
Yes	Local	91.9%	79.1%	68.4%	59.3%	52.2%	46.6%	41.9%
No	Navigational	52.9%	35.0%	25.9%	20.4%	16.6%	14.1%	12.0%
Yes	Navigational	92.5%	81.1%	71.6%	63.1%	56.0%	50.3%	45.8%
No	Transactional	75.0%	57.0%	46.0%	38.4%	32.6%	28.2%	24.9%
Yes	Transactional	92.9%	81.9%	72.7%	65.0%	58.2%	52.1%	47.4%
No	Video	74.4%	56.4%	45.2%	37.6%	31.9%	27.2%	23.4%
Yes	Video	93.1%	82.2%	72.8%	65.5%	59.0%	53.3%	48.5%

Without an AI Overview, behavior varies sharply by search type. Navigational searchers were gone the fastest, with only 12% still active at 21 seconds. Local searchers were the most engaged, with 32% still active at the same point, most likely because local results pages are rich in maps, business listings, and reviews that naturally spread attention across multiple elements.

With an AI Overview present, those differences nearly disappear. At three seconds, all five intent types are clustered between 91.9% and 93.1% still active. At 21 seconds, they remain tightly grouped between 41.9% and 48.5%.

This finding used our balanced dataset, meaning each search type was represented in a way that supports fair comparison across intent groups and AIO conditions. It is the only finding in this research that examined engagement purely in terms of time: are people still there, or have they left?

Why this matters for your website or brand: AI Overviews make the gap between seeing your listing and clicking it longer and more deliberate.

2. The Navigational Searcher Transformation

An engagement-equalizer effect hit hardest for navigational searches. Queries where someone types a brand name or website address directly into Google. These users have historically been the most reliable source of organic traffic; they already know where they want to go. This was especially true when people search in a browser bar connected to Google Search and were in a rush.

Without an AI Overview, only 12% of navigational users were still active on the results page at 21 seconds. With one, that figure rises to 46%. Users who would have been on your site within seconds are now spending far longer on Google before acting.

Cursor behavior tells the same story from a different angle. We measured how widely users’ cursors moved across the visible search page, combining both side-to-side and up-and-down movement into a single cursor-spread score. Without an AI Overview, navigational searchers showed the most concentrated cursor activity of any intent type: their cursor spread measured 8%, reflecting a tight, purposeful scan.

When an AI Overview is present, that figure jumps to 27.5%, indicating that even highly directed users engage with a much wider area of the page before reaching their destination.

Why this matters for your website or brand: Navigational searches have historically been close to guaranteed organic visits. A user who types your brand name directly into Google is already past the awareness and consideration stages. This data suggests that when an AI Overview appears on those searches, even the most directed users are being pulled into a broader exploration of the page before clicking through. (Balanced dataset)

3. Less Movement, Wider Coverage

We measured how searchers’ cursors moved within the visible search results page. When an AI Overview is present, users move and pause their cursor differently.

Users with an AI Overview kept their cursor still more often, about 44% of the time, compared to 29% when no AI Overview was present. At first glance, that could sound like disengagement. But those same users covered more of the screen with cursor movement, sweeping across 83% of the viewport compared to 66% without an AI Overview.

Image from author, May 2026

More pausing plus more ground covered suggests a reading-and-evaluating mode rather than a scanning-and-clicking mode. Users are not simply skimming the top and clicking. They appear to pause, move to another part of the page, and repeat.

This analysis examined cursor behavior across all search types, using a dataset that reflects how real searches break down in the wild. Informational searches make up the large majority of real-world queries, and that is reflected here.

Why this matters for your website or brand: The traditional mental model of a Google search result is that users scan the top few results, click the most relevant one, and move on. This finding suggests the model is changing.

That does not mean lower-ranked results are getting more clicks. It means the page is being traversed more thoroughly before a decision is made. Your title tag and meta description carry more weight because users appear to pause over search snippets rather than reflexively clicking the first result.

If your listing appears on a page with an AI Overview, you are competing in a slower, more considered decision environment. That rewards clarity and relevance in how your result is written, not simply rank position.

4. When AI Overviews Are Present, People Scroll Back Up Far More Often

Most people think of scrolling as a one-way journey: down the page toward the results. What we measured tells a different story. Users regularly scroll back up during a search session, and when an AI Overview is present, they do it substantially more. Your listing may get multiple looks, not one.

We tracked two things: whether a user reversed direction at any point during the session, and what proportion of total scrolling was spent going up the page rather than down. Both measures shift with AIO, but the second measure is the larger story.

Image from author, May 2026

The share of users who reverse direction at all increases modestly with AIO, from 51% to 59%. Among people who do reverse, the median user with an AI Overview spends nearly half, 47.5%, of total scrolling going back up the page. Without an AI Overview, that figure is 27%.

We tested informational and navigational searches for this. Both tell a consistent story. Navigational searchers show the largest shift, with back-scrolling percentage jumping from 23% to 44% when AIO is present. This reinforces a pattern seen in other findings: Users who normally move with purpose and speed are pulled into a more deliberate, back-and-forth mode of engagement by the presence of the AIO. (Representative dataset)

Why this matters for your website or brand: Back-scrolling is a signal of active comparison and reconsideration. When a user scrolls down, reads something, then returns upward before continuing, they are weighing options, not just taking the first thing they see.

A vague or generic title and description may pass a quick scan but fall short when a user returns to compare it directly with a competitor’s listing. Clarity and specificity in your result preview become a competitive advantage in this environment.

Summary Of Findings

AI Overviews slow the search experience and expand the decision-making window on the page itself. Users who encounter an AI Overview stay on Google longer, read more of the page, scroll back up more often, and show patterns consistent with active comparison rather than quick selection. For dwell behavior, AI Overview presence is a stronger predictor of user behavior than the type of search the person was conducting. This study looks at the SERP as a place where users pause, reverse direction, revisit content, and compare, and not simply a click surface. Without an AI Overview, dwell behavior varies by intent. With an AI Overview, those differences flatten into a narrow band, with roughly 42% to 49% of users still active on the page at 21 seconds across all five intent types. Among users who reverse scrolling direction, nearly half of the total scrolling on AIO pages is spent going back up the page, revisiting content they have already passed. These are not users simply rushing to a result. They are working through the page, weighing options, and reconsidering.

For brands, the practical implication is straightforward – the search result preview now carries more weight. Users appear to read, revisit, and compare listings more carefully before abandoning the SERP. The brands best positioned in this environment are those whose search presence is built for scrutiny, not just discovery.

Methodology

ClickStream Solutions analyzed, interpreted, and produced the findings from anonymized clickstream data provided by Surfer SEO. The data contained approximately 846,000 Google Search sessions from February and March 2026.

Because Surfer’s audience is composed of marketing-interested people, the findings may skew toward more search-savvy users. Their sessions included both work and non-work-related Google Search use. Only 1.1% of sessions involved marketing-related queries, with the remaining 98.9% spread across other categories. All users were in the USA.

Data was anonymized prior to analysis with no personally identifiable information retained. Users were informed that mouse movements might be captured.

The study used three analysis datasets: a balanced dataset of 74,848 sessions for fair comparisons across search types and AIO conditions (used for Findings 1 and 2); a representative dataset of 99,994 sessions reflecting the natural mix of real searches (used for Findings 3 and 4); and a filtered representative dataset of 99,994 sessions that excluded sessions with fewer than 3 seconds or more than 25 seconds on the SERP.