Google AI Overviews cut the click-through rate of the top-ranking organic result by roughly 58% as of December 2025, according to Ahrefs’ latest re-run of its tracking study — more than the 34.5% it measured eight months earlier — though Seer Interactive’s independent panel shows that same AIO-present CTR partly rebounding in early 2026, so “58%” is a snapshot, not a settled number.
Four research groups have now published overlapping but methodologically distinct measurements of what AI Overviews (AIO) do to organic clicks: Ahrefs (keyword-panel GSC data), Pew Research Center (real user browsing telemetry), Seer Interactive (client-account SERP tracking), and SparkToro/Similarweb (clickstream zero-click estimates). They agree on direction — AIO presence suppresses organic CTR, and zero-click search keeps rising — and disagree, sometimes sharply, on magnitude. That disagreement is itself the finding.
The headline number: Ahrefs’ 34.5% became 58%
Ahrefs’ original study, published April 17, 2025, compared 300,000 keywords (150,000 with an AI Overview present, 150,000 informational keywords without) using aggregated Google Search Console data for March 2024 versus March 2025. Position-one CTR on AIO-triggering keywords fell from an actual 7.3% to 2.6%, against a forecasted 4.0% had AIO not existed — a 34.5% reduction attributable to AI Overviews specifically.
Ahrefs re-ran the same methodology in February 2026, this time comparing December 2023 to December 2025 on the same 300,000-keyword panel. Position-one CTR on AIO keywords had dropped to 1.6%, against a forecasted 3.7% — a 58% reduction. Ahrefs also broke the effect out by SERP position: -58.0% at position 1, tapering to -19.4% by position 10, confirming the damage concentrates on top rankings rather than applying evenly down the page.
| Source | Method | Data window | Headline CTR finding |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | 300K keywords, aggregated GSC data | Mar 2024 vs Mar 2025 | -34.5% (position 1) |
| Ahrefs (update) | Same panel, re-run | Dec 2023 vs Dec 2025 | -58.0% (position 1) |
| Pew Research Center | 900-adult browser-tracking panel, 68,879 queries | March 2025 | 8% click rate w/ AIO vs 15% without |
| Seer Interactive | 53 brands, 5.47M queries, 2.43B impressions | Jan 2025–Feb 2026 | 1.3% CTR floor (Dec ’25), rebounding to 2.4% (Feb ’26) |
| SparkToro / Similarweb | Desktop + mobile clickstream panel | Jan–Apr 2026 | 68.01% of all Google searches end with zero clicks |
Pew tracked actual browsing behavior — and Google called it flawed
Ahrefs’ numbers come from aggregated Search Console data, which can’t isolate individual user sessions. Pew Research Center’s July 22, 2025 study did something different: it recruited roughly 900 US adults who consented to install a browser tracker, then logged their actual Google searches during March 2025. Of 68,879 unique queries, 12,593 (18%) triggered an AI Overview.
Users clicked a traditional organic result in just 8% of searches when an AI Overview appeared, versus 15% when it didn’t — roughly half the click rate. Only 1% of visits involved clicking a source link cited directly inside the AI Overview itself. Users were also more likely to end their browsing session entirely after an AIO-present search (26%) than after a plain results page (16%).
Google disputed the study on the record, calling it “a flawed methodology and skewed queryset that is not representative of Search traffic,” and stated it has “not observed significant drops in aggregate web traffic.” Pew’s panel is small by industry-benchmark standards (900 people), and an 18% AIO trigger rate is lower than some other trackers report for the same period — both are fair critiques of external validity. But Google has not published a comparable clickstream dataset of its own for outside verification, so the dispute remains unresolved by public data.
Seer Interactive’s 2026 data: a partial rebound, not a recovery
Seer Interactive’s third CTR study, published April 24, 2026, tracked 53 brand accounts across 5.47 million queries and 2.43 billion organic impressions from January 2025 through February 2026 — the largest account-level panel in this space. Organic CTR on AIO-present queries fell from 3.19% in January 2025 to a floor of 1.31% in December 2025, then climbed back to 2.36% by February 2026 — an 85% increase in two months that Seer’s own forecasting model did not predict.
That looks like good news until you check the control group: CTR on non-AIO queries rose over the same window too, from 2.75% (January 2025) to 3.82% (February 2026). So the gap between AIO-present and AIO-absent queries has not closed — Seer measured brand-cited AIO clicks still underperforming no-AIO clicks by roughly 38%, even after the rebound. Being cited inside an AI Overview delivered about 120% more clicks per impression than an uncited competitor on the same SERP, but a citation is a relative advantage within a shrinking pool, not a route back to pre-AIO baselines.
Seer’s data also quantifies exposure by intent: AI Overviews appeared on 36% of informational queries, 8% of commercial queries, and just 5% of transactional queries in this panel — and on 95.4% of “X vs Y” comparison queries specifically. Sites whose organic traffic leans informational are carrying most of the exposure described in this piece; see our DIY AI visibility audit checklist for a way to map that exposure on your own domain.
Zero-click search: the wider frame
SparkToro’s June 8, 2026 report, built on Similarweb desktop-and-mobile clickstream data for January–April 2026, found 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click to any destination — up from 60.45% in 2024 (Datos panel data), a 7.56-point jump in two years that SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin calls the fastest acceleration of the trend in a decade. Per 1,000 US Google searches, roughly 276 clicks now reach the open web, down from 374 in 2024 — a 26% reduction in raw click volume, independent of any single site’s rankings.
SparkToro’s own analysis attributes only part of this to AI Overviews and AI Mode directly — AI Mode accounted for just 0.34% of tracked searches in this window — and credits the rest to a broader shift toward on-SERP UI elements, repeat searching, and paid clicks. That’s a useful check against overattributing every traffic decline to AIO specifically, a point also relevant to our guide to measuring AI referral traffic, since AIO-suppressed organic clicks and AI-chatbot referral clicks are different line items that get conflated in casual reporting.
Where the studies actually disagree
Three points of real disagreement, not just noise: First, magnitude — Ahrefs’ 58% (position 1, Dec 2025) sits well above Pew’s implied ~47% relative drop (8% vs 15%) and inside the 49.4%–65.2% range Seer reported in its own September 2025 study, so the studies roughly triangulate even though none matches exactly. Second, trajectory — Ahrefs and Pew both describe a worsening trend through late 2025, while Seer’s Q1 2026 data shows AIO-present CTR recovering (though still trailing non-AIO CTR by a widening or steady gap depending on how you read it). Third, attribution — Google disputes that AIO is the cause of any aggregate traffic decline at all, a claim no independent panel in this roundup has been able to confirm or fully refute, since none has access to Google’s server-side click logs.
For citation strategy rather than raw clicks, see how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini choose citations differently — being the cited source inside an AIO is the one lever every study here agrees still moves the number, even as the underlying pool of clicks shrinks. This is one piece of a bigger picture; the how AI assistants decide which brands to recommend hub rounds up the rest of our AI-visibility research.
FAQ
Does a lower AIO-present CTR mean my rankings got worse?
Not necessarily. Seer Interactive’s data shows cases where CTR fell because impressions doubled (a query newly started triggering an AIO citing the brand) while raw clicks stayed flat — a measurement artifact, not a ranking problem. Check clicks and impressions separately in Search Console before concluding you lost visibility.
Is the CTR decline reversing in 2026?
Partially, on Seer Interactive’s panel: AIO-present organic CTR rose from a 1.31% floor in December 2025 to 2.36% in February 2026. But non-AIO CTR rose over the same window too, so the relative gap between AIO and non-AIO queries has not meaningfully closed, and Ahrefs’ December 2025 snapshot (58% reduction) remains the most recent cross-panel data point at the time of writing.
Which study should I trust for my own site?
None of them directly — all four are aggregate panels (keyword samples, small user cohorts, or client-account rollups), not your domain’s data. Use them for the range of plausible impact (roughly 35–65% CTR reduction on informational, AIO-triggering queries) and then check your own Search Console segmented by query intent and AIO presence.
Last updated September 15, 2026. This page is refreshed as benchmarks and scores move.