Almost every business owner who contacted us in recent months opened with the same line: our website is getting fewer visitors. They’re right, but that number on its own says very little.
Google sends fewer people through than it used to. SparkToro analysed Similarweb data from January to April 2026 and found that 68% of Google searches in the US end without anyone clicking anything. In 2024 that was still 60%. Read that and it’s tempting to blame AI and conclude there’s nothing you can do. That’s only half true. A drop almost always has more than one cause, and each cause calls for a different response.
Three reasons your graph is going down
The first is the best known. Google and ChatGPT now give the answer themselves. When an AI Overview sits above the results, click-through drops by almost 60%, according to the same research. That mainly hits pages that answer a question: what does a logo cost, how long does a website take, what’s the difference between RGB and CMYK. People now read that explanation at the top of Google without visiting your site. How to still show up by name in those AI answers is covered in our piece on brand visibility in AI search results.
The second cause has nothing to do with AI. From 24 September to 8 October 2026, Google rolled out a spam update, worldwide and in all languages. Even sites doing nothing wrong feel that in their numbers. If your traffic dropped exactly in those weeks, that’s a different story from a gradual decline over twelve months.
The third sits in your own measurement. Anyone who added a new cookie banner, changed their analytics settings or had the site rebuilt often sees a kink in the graph that says nothing about real visitors. So first check when the drop started and what changed on your site at that moment. Checks like that are a standard part of a solid web design project.
Fewer visitors is not yet proof that you’re losing customers.
The number that does matter
Visitor count has become a poor yardstick. Someone who used to read three blog posts before calling now gets that explanation from Google or ChatGPT. If that person still lands on your site afterwards, they already know what they want. So put your visitors next to your quote requests, phone calls and submitted forms for the same period. If only traffic drops, you’ve mostly lost readers who rarely became customers.
If your requests drop too, there’s work to do. Find out which pages lost the most and whether those were the pages that used to bring in customers. A product page that sinks is a bigger problem than an old blog post. Curious how other business owners handle this? On our LinkedIn page we share every week what we see in our clients’ numbers.
Conclusion
A falling visitor graph calls for a diagnosis. First find out when the drop started, which pages it hit and whether your requests fell with it. Only then do you know whether to adjust your site, your content or your marketing. Not sure what your numbers mean? See what we can do for you.
Does your business show up in ChatGPT?
With our free AI visibility scan we test whether your business shows up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. We check your schema markup and FAQ content and you get a report with concrete action points. The technical basis is in place within 1 to 2 weeks, visibility in AI answers builds over 60 to 90 days.