Back in April 2025, we found that AI Overview reduced clicks on high-quality content by 34.5%, despite Google’s statements to the contrary.
Since then, AI Overview has been rolled out in many countries and languages, and many websites have continued to see clicks from natural searches drop month after month.
Today, it seems that the impact of AI Overviews is getting worse. As I wrote in our previous lesson:
Assuming AI Overview stays in its current form, this is also likely to be the highest CTR will be. As the novelty wears off and the dirty click rule kicks in, I would expect to see clicks continue to decline.
To find out, we also ran our research using data from December 2025.
We found that the presence of AI Overview now correlates with 58% is a low average click-through rate for the top page.
Thanks (again) Google.
We used the same method as our previous tutorial:
- We chose 300,000 keywords from the Ahrefs Keywords Explorer database, which includes 150,000 keywords with an AI Overview and 150,000 keywords with an informational purpose and no AI Overview available.
- We used it aggregated Google Search Console data to find the keyword’s average desktop clickthrough rate (CTR) per month (total clicks/total impressions).
- We are compare click rates for both December 2023 (Pre-AI Survey) and December 2025 samples
Sidenote.
This is a two-year time gap (compared to one year in the previous study), for the simple reason that December 2024 is after the release of the AI overview.
See where the AI Overview appears in your rankings
You can use the SERP features filter to see where AI Overview starts in your key levels. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorernavigate to Organic keywords report, and choose An overview of AI from the SERP features filter.
In December 2023, the average CTR position for one of the informational keywords was 0.076. By December 2025, this had dropped to 0.039:
In December 2023, the average CTR position for one AI Overview keyword was 0.073. By December 2025, this is down to 0.016:
Sidenote.
“AI Overview keywords” refer to keywords that triggered the AI Overview in December 2025. In December 2023, before the release of the AI Overview, these keywords did not trigger the AI Overview.
Using the drop in CTR for informational keywords, we can also predict the CTR for AI Overview keywords, if AI Overview had not been released: 0.037 (0.072627*(0.038943/0.075730)).
If we calculate the difference between predicted and actual CTR, the data suggests that the presence of AI Overview now reduces the click-through rate of site 1 by ~58% ((0.015677-0.03734)/0.03734):
This is another significant drop in click through rate. Of the 100 clicks you would historically earn from a high-ranking page, Google now “keeps” 58.
What caused the CTR drop for non-AI Overview keywords?
AI Overview is the latest in a long line of search features that help solve a user’s query without leaving Google, including Local Pack, Top Stories, and most popularly, Featured Captions.
As the presence of these SERP features increases, click-through rates decrease. So-called zero-click search has been growing for a long time.
Read more.
As we learned earlier, about 9% of AI views come from outside the first place in the SERP:
We’ve done a similar analysis on AI Overview from low-level positions.
The negative effect of the AI overview continues, albeit in less dramatic terms (less mercy given the already low click-through rates of areas 2-10):
| Position in search results | Impact of click through rate |
|---|---|
| 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 Overview reduce organic click-through rate for one piece of content by 58%. This sad finding is confirmed by other studies, including Seer Interactive (organic CTR dropped between 49.4% to 65.2%), Authoritas (47.5%), and Daily Mail (reporting a low CTR of 80-90%).
Regardless of your feelings about the use and value of AI Overview, it seems absolutely true that they remove most of the clicks once they are on the top pages. Searching is now a click away.
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