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Google clicks cost more and free clicks are disappearing. Why your business needs an AEO strategy now

By the Preferly team · Published

Short answer: Google Ads clicks keep getting more expensive. Google's average cost per click rose 7% in 2025 and 4% year over year in Q3 2026. At the same time, the free clicks are drying up: 68% of US Google searches now end without a click, and an AI Overview at the top of the page goes with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top organic result. And customers are asking AI instead: 45% of US consumers asked AI for local business recommendations in the past year, up from 6% the year before. Paying for visits costs more, earning them for free is harder, and more of the choice happens inside an AI answer. That makes an answer engine optimization (AEO) strategy a basic part of being found, not an experiment.

Quick picks

  • Who this is for: owners who get new customers through search (ads, organic, or both) and want a baseline of what AI says about them before they spend more on clicks.
  • Who this is not for: teams looking for a monthly AI-visibility dashboard. Preferly is a one-time AI visibility audit ($99, paid once) plus a free check, not a monitoring subscription.
  • Paid clicks: Alphabet reported cost per click up 7% in 2025 and 4% year over year in Q3 2026. WordStream's 2026 average across 13,474 US search campaigns was $5.42 (attorneys $9.87, restaurants $2.05).
  • Free clicks: 68% of US Google searches end without a click (SparkToro / Similarweb, Jan–Apr 2026). An AI Overview goes with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top organic result (Ahrefs).
  • AI recommendations: 45% of US consumers asked AI for local business recommendations in the past year, up from 6% (BrightLocal, 2026).
  • Where to start: the free check asks 3 AI models 5 customer questions in about a minute. The full report covers 10 models. See an example report.

Three independent sources point the same way.

Alphabet filings (Google Search and other properties)

Source type: company filings. Alphabet reports how much the average paid click on Google Search and its other properties changed from a year earlier. In 2025, cost per click rose 7% and paid clicks rose 6%. In 2026 it rose 5% in Q1, 3% in Q2 and 4% in Q3, while paid clicks grew 13%, 13% and 8%. Google is selling more ad clicks, and each one costs a little more.

Small and mid-size advertisers (WordStream)

Source type: agency benchmark. WordStream by LocaliQ studies its customers' search campaigns each year. Its 2025 report put the average cost per click at $5.26, up 12.88%, with costs rising in 87% of industries. Its 2026 report (13,474 US campaigns, April 2025 to March 2026) put it at $5.42, about 3% higher, and more than twice the $2.32 of 2016. WordStream calls the year "fairly stable", and conversion rates rose in 87% of industries, so ads still work. They just cost more to keep.

Local categories pay the most. Attorneys averaged $9.87 a click, home improvement $8.33 and dentists $8.00, against $2.05 for restaurants and food. Real estate clicks rose 27.27% in a year, and personal services and health and fitness about 23% each.

Large advertisers (Tinuiti)

Source type: large-agency spend report. Tinuiti, an agency managing more than $4 billion a year in ad spend, found Google Search cost per click roughly flat from Q3 2025 to Q2 2026, then up 4% in Q3 2026. As MediaPost reported, Tinuiti ties most of that to Amazon leaving almost all US Google Shopping auctions in mid-2025, and other large retailers filling the gap since.

Is AI behind the price rises?

Nobody has proven it. Google's 10-Q says cost per click moves with "device mix, geographic mix, advertiser spending, ongoing product and policy changes, product mix, property mix" and exchange rates. It doesn't single out AI.

Agencies told Digiday in May 2026 that some clients saw cost per click rise about 10% to 15% over the year, and a few as much as 25%. They pointed to more bidders in each auction (Adthena estimated 35% more advertisers year over year) and to AI Max, Google's AI-driven search campaign type. One agency head said clients were moving money into paid search "because of SEO being less valuable."

That's a plausible link, not a measured cause. But for a business owner, the cause matters less than the direction. Whatever is driving it, the paid route costs more each year, and the free route is shrinking fast.

Ads are moving into the AI answers too. In October 2026 Google expanded ads in AI Mode to 10 more countries and began showing them in follow-up questions in the US. On its Q3 2026 call, as The Verge reported, Google said it was seeing "lower monetization" from AI Mode ads so far. Either way, an ad placed beside an answer is a different thing from being one of the businesses the answer names. For how Overviews pick sources, see Google AI Overviews.

Free clicks: disappearing

This is where the numbers are large.

  • Zero-click searches — 68%. SparkToro, using Similarweb's US desktop and mobile panel for January to April 2026, found 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click to any site. The 2024 figure was 60.45%, from a different panel, so the two aren't a perfect match.
  • AI Overviews vs top organic — 58% lower CTR. Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords between December 2023 and December 2025. When an AI Overview appeared, the top organic result's click-through rate was 58% lower than expected.
  • Clicks inside the summary — 1%. Pew Research tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. When a search showed an AI summary, people clicked a result in 8% of visits, against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits.

The effect on ad clicks is mixed. Seer Interactive's 2026 study of 53 brands found paid click-through rate on searches with an AI Overview rose slightly over 2025, from 14.6% to 16.2%, while on searches without one it fell from 26% to 21.8%. So the evidence on ad clicks is mixed. Either way, you pay for each visit.

Customers are asking AI instead

The third change is the one that matters most for a local business. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults) found that 45% of US consumers asked AI for local business recommendations in the past year, up from 6% the year before. ChatGPT was the most used, by 31%, followed by Google AI Mode at 23%. Among adults aged 30 to 44, it was 64%. And 63% of people who use AI for recommendations said they trust them.

When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini for "a good dentist near me", the answer names a few businesses, and that short list is often where the decision gets made. If you're on it, you reached that customer without paying for the click. If you're not, no analytics report tells you that you were left out. Preferly's AI search for dentists page covers what a practice can fix so AI can find and confirm it.

Why AEO is now a necessity

Put the three changes together. Paid search still works, but each visit costs a little more every year. Organic search sends fewer visits for the questions AI answers. And a growing share of customers skip the list of links and take the AI's short list. A business that only budgets for ads and classic SEO is paying more to compete for a shrinking part of the journey.

Answer engine optimization (AEO, also called GEO) is the work of being one of the businesses an AI names, with your facts stated the way your website states them. It doesn't replace ads or SEO, and much of it is good SEO done carefully. The difference is the goal: a mention in the answer, not a blue link. And the cost is mostly your time, not a bid that rises every year. See what generative engine optimization is.

An AEO strategy has three parts: know where you stand, fix what AI can't read or gets from the wrong source, and check again to see what moved.

Step one: find out what AI says about you today

About a minute for the free check · 10 models on the full report · paid once

Every AEO strategy starts with a baseline, because you can't fix what you haven't seen. Ask the questions a new customer would ask, without naming your business, and look at three things:

  1. Named or not. In how many answers, and how high in the list.
  2. Facts right or wrong. Hours, prices, services and location, compared line by line with your website. Where AI contradicts your website, customers see the wrong version.
  3. Who instead. Which competitors show up, and which sites AI cited when it named them. See is AI recommending my competitors.

You can do this by hand in a few AI tools. It's slow, answers vary from run to run, and each model draws on different sources, so one tool's answer doesn't tell you much about the others.

Preferly runs this baseline for you. The free check asks 3 AI models 5 customer questions in about a minute and shows your score, how often AI names you and up to 2 places where AI contradicts your website. The full report asks 10 leading AI models, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude Opus and Grok, 5+ questions with web search on. It names every competitor AI recommends instead of you, checks every claim against your site and lists each fix in priority order. It's $99, paid once, with one free re-scan within 30 days. Compare the free check and the paid report on pricing, or see an example report.

Step two: fix what AI reads

Site and listing basics · plain text · matching schema · same facts on listings

These are the basics that decide whether AI can find and state your business correctly.

  1. Crawler access. Check robots.txt for rules that block GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended. A bot check or firewall can also stop them without you knowing. Our free AI crawler check shows what each crawler sees.
  2. Plain-text facts. Hours, phone, address, service area and prices should be readable text on your pages, not only in images, PDFs or a booking widget.
  3. Matching structured data. LocalBusiness (or the right subtype) markup with your name, address, phone and hours, kept in step with the page. See schema markup for AI search.
  4. Consistent listings. Your site, Google Business Profile and major listings should give the same hours, phone and address.
  5. Pages that answer the question. A page that answers "how much does X cost" or "do you offer Y" in its first lines gives AI something to quote. See how AI Overviews pick sources.
  6. Competitor citation paths. If AI keeps citing the same directories or review sites for them, those are the places to be listed too. See why AI recommends competitors.

Step three: check again

AI answers change as models update and as they find your fixes. Re-run the same questions after your changes, so you compare like with like. The full Preferly report includes one free re-scan within 30 days.

Start with what AI says now

Rising click prices and vanishing free clicks are measured. What isn't measured for most businesses is what AI tells customers about them. That's the gap an AEO strategy closes first.

The free check takes about a minute. If you want the full picture, the $99 AI visibility audit covers 10 models with every fix in priority order. If your report finds no fixes, email us within 7 days and we'll give you a full refund. Preferly doesn't cover Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot yet. See an example report or compare pricing.

Sources

Questions

Do I need an AEO strategy?

If new customers find you through search, yes. 45% of US consumers asked AI for local business recommendations in the past year (BrightLocal, 2026), up from 6% the year before, while organic clicks shrink and paid clicks cost more each year. An AEO strategy makes sure AI can read your site, states your facts the way your website does, and names you for the questions customers ask.

Where does an AEO strategy start?

With a baseline: what AI models say today when a customer asks about your kind of business. Are you named, are your facts right or does AI contradict your website, and which competitors get named instead. Without that, you can't tell which fixes matter or whether they worked.

Did AI Overviews make Google Ads clicks more expensive?

Nobody has shown that directly. Google's own filings say cost per click moves with advertiser spending, product and policy changes, device mix and other factors. Agencies point to more advertisers in each auction and to Google's AI-driven campaign types. What is well measured is that AI Overviews cut organic clicks.

How much does a Google Ads click cost in 2026?

WordStream by LocaliQ puts the 2026 average at $5.42 across 13,474 US search campaigns (April 2025 to March 2026), from $2.05 for restaurants to $9.87 for attorneys. Your own account is the number that matters.

Does Preferly check Google AI Overviews?

Not yet. Preferly asks 10 leading AI models through their APIs, including Gemini. Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot aren't covered yet. The site fixes it suggests are the same basics those tools read.

Sources

Start free check

3 AI models, 5 customer questions, about a minute. Or check whether AI crawlers can reach your site.

Check your site free

No email. It reads your robots.txt and homepage, the way AI crawlers do.