AI Overview CTR: What the Data Shows

By Amit Patel

Ask five sources how much AI Overviews cut click-through rate and you’ll get five different numbers — all real, all measuring something slightly different. This rounds up the published, named studies rather than a single cited figure, and explains why the range is as wide as it is.

The Published Studies

Six studies, six methodologies, six numbers:

• Ahrefs (December 2025 update): AI Overviews reduced clicks to the top-ranking organic result by roughly 58%, based on a large-scale ranking dataset.
• Seer Interactive: organic CTR on informational queries with an AI Overview present fell 61% since mid-2024, with paid CTR on the same queries down 68% — though their April 2026 update found paid CTR partially recovering (14.6% to 16.2%) as AIO-adjacent ad placements matured.
• Amsive: analyzing roughly 700,000 keywords, found an average 15.49% CTR drop overall, with steeper drops (over 37%) when an AI Overview combined with a featured snippet on the same query.
• Pew Research Center: using real browsing-panel data rather than ranking-tool estimates, found searchers clicked a traditional result 8% of the time when an AI summary appeared, versus 15% without one — roughly half.
• Conductor (2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks Report): analyzing 21.9 million Google searches, found AI Overviews now appear on 25.11% of queries overall, with brands actually cited inside the Overview seeing 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than uncited brands on the same query — a reminder that the CTR story isn’t purely negative once citation is factored in.
• Ideava’s 12-study roundup: compiling multiple independent analyses, found organic CTR declines clustering mostly in the 15-60% range depending on query type and measurement window.

Why the Numbers Differ

The spread isn’t inconsistency — it’s different questions being answered:

• All queries vs. AIO-triggering queries only: a study measuring average CTR across all searches will show a smaller decline than one isolating only the queries where an AI Overview actually appeared.
• Organic vs. paid: paid CTR has generally dropped faster than organic, though 2026 data shows some paid recovery as ad placements adapt to AI-Overview layouts.
• Ranking-tool estimates vs. real browsing-panel data: tools like Ahrefs and Amsive infer clicks from ranking position changes and industry click-curve models; Pew measured actual observed browsing behavior from a panel — a methodologically different (and arguably stronger) kind of evidence.
• Time period: AI Overview rollout, format, and query coverage have all changed materially between the earlier 2024-era studies and the 2026 data — comparing an old study to a new one isn’t apples to apples.

The Pew Research Behavioral Data

Pew’s July 2025 report is worth separating out because it’s built from actual observed browsing data (a panel of roughly 900 U.S. adults), not modeled from ranking positions. About 58% of participants ran at least one Google search in March 2025 that produced an AI summary. When a summary appeared, participants clicked a traditional web result 8% of the time, versus 15% when no summary appeared — and they engaged with an AI Overview’s own source citations only about 1% of the time. Participants were also more likely to end their browsing session entirely after a summary appeared (26%) than after a summary-free result page (16%).

Where CTR Actually Holds Up

The decline isn’t uniform. Branded queries trigger AI Overviews far less often than informational ones, and when they do, some data shows a modest CTR boost rather than a decline — people searching a brand name already know what they want and click through anyway. Conductor’s citation data points the same direction at a larger scale: being the cited source inside the Overview meaningfully outperforms not being cited, even though both are worse than a world without AI Overviews at all. The practical takeaway isn’t “CTR is dead” — it’s “being the cited source matters more than it used to.”

Frequently Asked Questions