VercatusEvidence on AI Overviews and organic click-through rate
When an AI Overview is present, organic clicks fall sharply. Seer Interactive (3,119 queries across 42 client organisations, 25.1M organic impressions, Jun 2024–Sep 2025) measured organic CTR on AIO queries falling from 1.76% to 0.61% (−61%) and paid CTR −68%. Ahrefs (300,000 keywords, Google Search Console data from Dec 2023 vs Dec 2025, published Feb 2026) found an AI Overview correlated with a 58% lower average CTR for the top-ranking page, up from 34.5% in its April 2025 study. Pew found users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary vs 15% without, and clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits.
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- 4Pew Research · 2025Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the resultspewresearch.org
CGrade C: reputable industry data or observation. A grade describes the provenance of the sources above; it is not a probability that a change will work. The effect basis says how the size of the effect is known: measured by a study, taken from an industry report, only documented without a size, or not quantified.
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