The Summary Comes First: How AI Overviews Reshape Consumer Product Search

Search engines increasingly place AI Overviews—generative-AI syntheses that answer a query within the results page—above traditional links. This changes product search from a source-led process, in which consumers navigate and integrate information themselves, toward a summary-led process, in which the interface performs part of that work. Across three online experiments (total N = 584), participants used realistic, clickable search environments recreated in Qualtrics, allowing us to observe source clicks and time spent on sources as search unfolded. Study 1 shows that an AI Overview, compared with a traditional search engine results page, reduces both source clicks and source-viewing time during initial product search. Study 2 replicates this effect across search, experience, and credence product categories. Product type alone does not moderate the effect, but interface type, product type, and positive attitudes toward AI jointly shape exposure clicks. Study 3 shows that AI Overviews reduce epistemic vigilance—the critical appraisal of information and its sources—which indirectly increases purchase intention. The findings identify summary-led search as a phase-specific search architecture that reallocates epistemic labor from consumers to the interface, compressing initial source navigation while separately reducing critical scrutiny of product information.