Your Google Impressions Are Up but Enquiries Are Down. Here Is What Changed.

The phone rings less than it did last year. The WhatsApp enquiries are slower. You open Search Console, or someone opens it for you, and the line that counts how often your business appeared on Google is higher than it has ever been. More people are seeing you. Fewer of them are getting in touch.

You are not imagining it, and you are not alone. A blogger described the same picture on Hacker News: after AI Overviews arrived, "there is a sharp drop in traffic. However, it still showed higher impressions then ever." The thread is linked in the references. The rest of this post explains what changed, how to confirm it on your own figures in ten minutes, and the one page to write when you have.

What changed on the Google results page?

Google now answers many questions at the top of the results page, in AI Overviews, and in a separate conversation view called AI Mode. A customer who types "how much does a wedding cake cost in Lekki" can read a summary built from several websites, with links to them, and stop there.

Google counts those appearances. Its AI features page says that sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the overall search traffic in Search Console, reported in the Performance report under the Web search type. So when one of your pages is used as a source in an AI answer, that is an impression. If the customer reads the answer and closes the tab, there is no click.

That is how the impressions line can rise while visits fall. Your page is doing work for the customer on Google's page. The customer is getting what they came for, and you are getting nothing you can count.

For a page to be used this way at all, Google's same page says it must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. So a rise in impressions is also evidence that Google can read the page. The problem is what happens after it is read.

Is it my website, or is it Google?

It can be either, and the figures will tell you which. Google's own guide to traffic drops lists the usual causes: algorithm updates, technical problems that stop Google crawling or indexing a page, security warnings, spam violations, seasonal changes in demand, and site moves that change your page addresses.

Two of those are easy to rule out before you blame AI answers. Seasonality: a cake shop in October is not a cake shop in December. And updates: Google's Search Status Dashboard lists ranking updates with their dates, and as of 8 October 2026 it showed the September 2026 spam update as closed after 13 days and 16 hours. If your clicks fell inside those dates and your position fell with them, that is a different problem from the one this post is about.

The pattern this post is about has a particular shape: average position roughly the same, impressions up, clicks down, and the loss concentrated on questions rather than on your business name.

How to check it in Search Console in ten minutes

You need a Search Console login for your website. If nobody has one, step 0 is asking whoever built the site to give you access.

1. Open the Performance report and choose the Web search type. Set the date range to the last 16 months, which is what Google's traffic-drop guide recommends for seeing the long pattern. Tick clicks, impressions and average position so all three lines show. You will see whether the gap between impressions and clicks opened gradually or on a particular week.
2. Compare like with like. Use the Compare tab and choose the last three months against the same three months last year. Google's guide suggests exactly this comparison to separate a real drop from a seasonal one. You will now have two numbers for each line, this year and last.
3. Open the Queries tab and sort by the difference in clicks. Look down the list for questions: "how much", "how to", "which is best", "what time does". Note the ones where impressions rose and clicks fell. You will usually find that the loss sits in a handful of question-shaped searches.
4. Click one of those queries, then open the Pages tab. This shows which of your pages answers it on Google. Google's guide makes the same point about pages: check whether the drop is across the whole site, a group of pages, or one page. You will end with one page address written down.
5. Open the Generative AI performance report. Google announced it on 3 June 2026 and rolled it out to all websites from 31 August 2026. It shows how often your pages appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and which pages, though not for which questions. If the page from step 4 is listed, you have confirmed the pattern.

When we opened ours on 7 October 2026, Nexum-sol's pages had appeared in Google's AI answers 41 times between 5 July and 3 October 2026, and the report did not say which questions put them there. The number is small and it is real. Write yours down with the date.

What the pattern means for your business

If position held, impressions rose and clicks fell on question searches, Google is answering the first question for the customer and using your page to do it. That first question is often a general one: a price range, a definition, a how-to. A summary can answer it.

The customer who still has a question after the summary is the one who calls. They want to know whether you have it in stock, whether you deliver to Ajah, whether Saturday is free, what it costs for their exact case. A summary of several websites cannot answer that for your business. Your page can.

So the page from step 4 needs to change. Today it probably answers the first question well, which is why Google uses it. It needs to answer the second question better.

The one page to write

Take the page you wrote down in step 4 and rewrite it, or write a companion page and link to it from the top of the old one.

1. Keep the first answer short and accurate. Google is already using it. Do not remove it. Put it in the first paragraph, in plain words.
2. Add the next question as a heading, in the customer's words. "How much does a three-tier wedding cake cost at our Lekki bakery?" answers what the summary cannot. You will have a heading only your business can answer.
3. Answer it with specifics. Your price range, your turnaround, your areas served, your hours. A customer who reads only this section should know whether to call.
4. Put your name, number and WhatsApp link next to that answer. The visitor who arrives here has already decided to ask. Make the next step one tap.
5. Add three or four questions customers ask you on WhatsApp, each with a two-sentence answer. These are the questions that come after the summary.

When it is done, you will have a page where the first paragraph serves Google's summary and everything below it serves the customer who clicked through.

Where else did the enquiries go?

Some of them went to a different screen entirely. Customers now ask chatbots the same questions they used to type into Google, and those conversations never appear in Search Console at all.

Pew Research Center's 2026 survey found information search was the top use of those chatbots, at 42%. The simplest way to know whether this is happening to you is to ask. Add one question to every new enquiry: "Where did you hear about us?" If people start saying ChatGPT, you have a second channel to watch, and the post on getting ChatGPT to recommend your business covers it.

What not to do

• Do not answer a click drop by doubling the ad budget straight away. Ads may be the right call, and they do not tell you why your own pages stopped earning visits. Run the check first.
• Do not block Google from summarising your pages without thinking it through. Google's AI features page names the controls, such as nosnippet and noindex, and they also change how the page shows up in ordinary results. A business that hides from the summary can lose the listing as well.
• Do not rewrite every page at once. Change the one page from step 4, record its clicks and impressions on the day you change it, and compare a month later. Then do the next one.

Google publishes no timeline for how quickly a changed page is shown differently, so nobody can promise you a date. The comparison a month later is the only honest answer to "did it work?"

One forward before you go: open Search Console today, go to Performance, compare the last three months with the same three months last year, and write down total clicks and total impressions for both periods with today's date. If you cannot sign in, forward this post to whoever runs the website and ask for those four numbers.

Frequently asked questions

Why are my impressions going up while my clicks go down?

Usually because Google is showing your page in more places where the customer gets an answer without visiting. Google's AI features page says sites appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in the overall search traffic reported in the Performance report, under the Web search type. An appearance in an AI answer counts as an impression even when the customer reads the summary and stops. Check the comparison steps in this post before you assume that is the whole story.

Is this an SEO problem?

Partly. The checks in this post are standard SEO diagnosis and any good developer will recognise them. What is newer is that Google now answers many questions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, so a page can hold its ranking and still lose the click. SEO reports measure rankings and clicks; whether your business is named inside an AI answer has to be measured separately.

Can I see exactly which AI Overviews my pages appeared in?

Not query by query. Google's Generative AI performance report, available to all websites since 31 August 2026, shows impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's 3 June 2026 announcement lists those fields and does not list queries. So you can see which pages appear in AI answers and how often, and you have to work out the questions from the Queries tab of the ordinary Performance report.

Should I block Google from using my pages in AI Overviews?

Think hard before you do. Google's AI features page names the controls that limit how a page is shown, such as nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex, and they also shape how the page appears in ordinary results. Blocking the summary can cost you the ordinary listing too. Most small businesses gain more by making the page answer the question that leads to a call.

Did a Google update cause my drop?

It might have, and you can check. Google's Search Status Dashboard lists ranking updates with their dates; as of 8 October 2026 it showed the September 2026 spam update as closed after 13 days and 16 hours. If your clicks fell sharply inside an update's dates and your average position fell with them, read Google's traffic drop guide before you change anything else.

How long before a rewritten page brings enquiries back?

Nobody can give you an honest date. Google publishes no timeline for how quickly a changed page is recrawled or shown differently, and neither do OpenAI or Perplexity. Record clicks and impressions for the page on the day you change it and compare a month later.

Are the people who still click worth less?

Google says the opposite. Its AI features page says that when people click from results pages with AI Overviews, the clicks are higher quality, meaning they tend to spend more time on the site. That is Google's claim about its own product, so test it on your own figures: compare enquiries per visit before and after.

References & sources

1. Google Search Central, AI features and your website (page marked last updated 10 December 2025; read 8 October 2026: AI feature appearances are included in the Performance report under Web; eligibility rule; snippet controls)
2. Google Search Central, Debugging drops in Google Search traffic (page marked last updated 10 December 2025; read 8 October 2026)
3. Google Search Central blog, Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console (3 June 2026) (carries the note that from 31 August 2026 the reports reached all websites worldwide)
4. Google, Google Search Status Dashboard (read 8 October 2026: September 2026 spam update closed)
5. Owner report, a blogger's traffic dropped with AI Overviews while impressions rose, Hacker News
6. Nexum-sol, Generative AI performance report for nexum-sol.com in Search Console, 5 July to 3 October 2026, opened 7 October 2026 (first-party; impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, recorded in the agency's own run log)
7. Pew Research Center, Americans and AI 2026 (5,119 US adults, February 2026)
8. BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults)