Glenn Gabe, writing on his GSQi blog, has published Google Search Console data from five French sites showing how AI Overviews and AI Mode changed traffic after Google launched them in France on July 22, 2026. Three sites lost clicks sharply. Two barely moved. The split matters because it undercuts both the claim that every site is bleeding traffic and the claim that nobody is.
Gabe argues the French launch is the cleanest natural experiment available. A single country got the features on a known date, and Search Console now has a Generative AI report that covers both AI Overviews and AI Mode. In his words: “From what I can remember, we’ve never had such a clear date of AIOs rolling out in a specific country.” Ahrefs shared monitoring data in September, but Gabe notes it came without Search Console examples.
The first site shows the pattern most clearly. Generative AI impressions jumped on July 22 and kept climbing. Daily clicks fell from about 750 to about 400, nearly half. Impressions held steady, so the pages still ranked. CTR dropped from 2% to 1.1% overnight. The pages kept their visibility; the clicks stopped arriving.
Two YMYL sites took heavier hits. One fell from roughly 80 daily clicks in France to roughly 25, with a second drop near August 10. The other saw CTR slide from 1.2% to .4% after launch, plus another click drop around August 13. Gabe believes Google widened AI Overviews to more query types after an initial, more cautious phase for sensitive topics, and says he saw the same double drop across several YMYL sites. That is his reading, not a confirmed Google rollout detail.
The remaining two sites tell a different story. One saw Generative AI impressions surge while clicks stayed strong, recovering from a summer dip by early September. The other showed stable clicks, impressions, and CTR. Gabe suggests the calmer position movement on that site could reflect people expanding AI Overviews, or Google expanding them by default for more queries, though he does not present this as settled.
Average position deserves care when you read these reports. A citation inside an AI Overview registers an impression only when it is visible. Gabe says he believes collapsed AI Overviews explain the position wobble on the first site: a page that also holds a classic organic listing gets its impression logged there, at a lower position. If that holds, position trends in Search Console are partly an artifact of display state, not a ranking verdict.
The sample is five sites, chosen by one analyst. It cannot show how common each outcome is, and the timing alone does not prove the rollout caused every change. Gabe himself flags that one site’s impressions fell about a week before launch, an anomaly he also saw in other countries where traffic rose.
His checklist is practical. Filter Search Console to France, open the Generative AI report, then compare clicks, impressions, CTR, and position in the web performance report from July 22 onward. Inspect the SERPs for dropped queries to see whether AI Overviews are collapsed or expanded by default, because Google began defaulting some queries to expanded displays toward the end of August. Slice branded and navigational queries away from non-branded ones, because they carry higher CTRs. Compare against last year to rule out seasonality.
Teams preparing for AI Overviews in other markets should run this France audit on their own French data now, then build query-type segments and stakeholder expectations before launch, not after the first traffic report.
Glenn Gabe, GSQi (gsqi.com), published November 9, 2026.
