As AI Expands, People May Be Getting Health Information Without Reaching the Source
AI-generated search results and other AI health tools are changing the way people encounter health information online, potentially making it less likely that users visit the organizations and websites that originally produced the information.
An analysis published last year by Pew Research Center tracked the web browsing activity of a nationally representative panel of 900 U.S. adults over one month in 2025. Google users rarely clicked on a link cited in an AI Overview in Google search results, doing so in just 1% of cases. When AI Overviews were present in search results, Google users were also less likely to click links from the search results that followed, doing so 8% of the time compared to 15% for pages without AI Overviews.
A March KFF poll found that about two-thirds of adults reported seeking physical or mental health information and advice from an internet search engine (68%) in the past year. With many search engines providing AI-generated summaries of search results, the Pew Research Center analysis suggests that people may be receiving information from websites without directly encountering those sources. For health organizations and other trusted messengers, evolving user behavior could change the relationship between providing information and building recognition or trust.
As AI features expand and user behaviors continue to evolve, some organizations are using techniques to increase the likelihood that their content will appear in AI-generated answers. Health care and pharmaceutical companies were early adopters of a practice called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), designed to help sources appear more often in AI systems. One study showed these techniques increased a source’s visibility in AI responses by up to 40%, although effects varied across domains.
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