Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%
By Ryan Law
Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs
Since then, AI Overviews have rolled out to more countries and more languages, and many websites have continued to see the clicks from organic search decline month-over-month.
Today, it seems likely that the impact of AI Overviews has worsened. As I wrote in our previous study:
To find out, we re-ran our study using data from December 2025.
We found that the presence of an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% lower average clickthrough rate for the top-ranking page.
Thanks (again) Google.
Methodology
We used the same methodology as our previous study:
- We selected 300,000 keywords from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer database, consisting of 150,000 keywords with an AI Overview present and 150,000 keywords with informational intent and no AI Overview present.
- We used aggregated Google Search Console data to get each keyword’s average desktop clickthrough rate (CTR) per month (sum of clicks/sum of impressions).
- We then compared the clickthrough rates for both samples for December 2023 (pre-AI Overviews) and December 2025
Sidenote
See where AI Overviews appear for your rankings
Findings
In December 2023, the average position one CTR for informational keywords was 0.076. In December 2025, this had dropped to 0.039:
In December 2023, the average position one CTR for AI Overview keywords was 0.073. In December 2025, this has dropped to 0.016:
Sidenote
Using the drop in CTR for informational keywords, we can again predict the CTR for AI Overview keywords, had AI Overviews not rolled out: 0.037(0.072627*(0.038943/0.075730)).
If we calculate the difference between the forecasted and actual CTR, the data suggest that the presence of AI Overviews now reduces the click-through rate for position 1 by ~58%((0.015677-0.03734)/0.03734):
This is another significant drop in click-through rate. For every 100 clicks you could historically earn for a top-ranking page, Google now “keeps” 58.
What caused the CTR drop for non-AI Overview keywords?
As we’ve studied previously, around 9% of AI Overviews appear outside position one in the SERP:
We ran the same analysis on AI Overviews appearing in lower-ranking positions.
The negative impact of AI Overviews continues, albeit in less dramatic terms (small mercy given the already low click-through rates of positions 2-10):
Position in search results | Clickthrough rate impact |
|---|---|
1 | -58.0% |
2 | -50.8% |
3 | -46.4% |
4 | -38.8% |
5 | -32.6% |
6 | -30.5% |
7 | -29.7% |
8 | -28.8% |
9 | -29.7% |
10 | -19.4% |
Final thoughts
As of December 2025, AI Overviews reduce the organic click-through rate for position one content by 58%. This bleak finding is corroborated by other research, including Seer Interactive (organic CTR down between 49.4% to 65.2%), Kevin Indig (>50%), Authoritas (47.5%), and even the Daily Mail (reporting 80-90% lower CTR).
Regardless of your feelings about the utility and value of AI Overviews, it seems categorically true that they siphon away the majority of the clicks once available to top-ranking pages. Search is becoming zero-click.
Further reading
Ryan Law is the Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs. Ryan has 13 years experience as a writer, content strategist, team lead, marketing director, VP, CMO, and agency founder. He’s helped dozens of companies improve their content marketing and SEO, including Google, Zapier, GoDaddy, Clearbit, and Algolia. He’s also a novelist and the creator of two content marketing courses.
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