{"id":1806,"slug":"pew-session-end-26-vs-16-percent-with-ai-summary","title":"Pew — 26% of users ended the search session after seeing an AI summary vs 16% without","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["measurement","ai-overview-prevalence"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Pew — **26% of users ended the search session when an AI summary appeared vs 16% without.**\n\n**Source:** Pew Research Center, https://pewresearch.org — Jul 22, 2025.\n\n**Confidence:** Verified.\n\n**Why this matters for Candid:** Reinforces [[pew-click-rate-15-vs-8-percent-with-ai-summary]] — the search session is increasingly the answer surface itself. The strategic implication is the same: optimise for citation, not just ranking.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"pew-18-percent-google-searches-ai-summary-march-2025","title":"Pew Research Center — 18% of Google searches in March 2025 produced an AI summary (68,879 searches across 900 US adults; independent anchor)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"pew-click-rate-15-vs-8-percent-with-ai-summary","title":"Pew — when an AI summary appears, users click a traditional link 8% of the time vs 15% without; only 1% click a link inside the summary","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-website-as-working-surface-june-2026","title":"Research brief: the website as a working surface of the business — four capabilities, AI-citation decoupling, freshness as a real signal (June 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"rule-decouple-from-google-rank-as-sole-success-metric","title":"R5 — Decouple from Google rank as sole success metric; AI citation, AI-Mode mentions, and direct-traffic / branded search now matter independently","kind":"rule","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}]},"created_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.653Z","updated_at":"2026-06-21T13:17:17.653Z"}