AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%

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 GSC 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 March 2024 (before the US rollout of AI overviews) and March 2025 (after).

In March 2024, the average position one CTR for informational keywords was 0.056. In March 2025, this had dropped to 0.031:

In March 2024, the average position one CTR for AI Overview keywords was 0.073. In March 2025, this had dropped to 0.026:

We can use the drop in CTR for informational keywords to predict the CTR for our sample of AI Overview keywords, assuming AI Overviews had not rolled out. This forecasted CTR is 0.040 (0.073*(0.031/0.056)).

Calculating the difference between the forecasted and actual CTR for AI Overview keywords suggests that the presence of AI Overviews reduces the click-through rate for position 1 by ~34.5% ((0.026-0.040)/0.040):

Final thoughts

This isn’t surprising. I have seen anecdata suggesting that some websites have seen clicks reduce by 20–40% since the rollout of AI overviews.

It seems possible. AI Overviews function in a similar way to Featured Snippets, by trying to resolve the searcher’s query directly in the SERP—likely contributing to more zero-click searches. And although AI Overviews often contain citation links, there can be many of these links cited, making it less likely for any single link to earn the lion’s share of clicks.

It’s also telling that despite Google’s optimistic claim that “links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query”, there is still no way to disambiguate AI Overview clicks and impressions from the rest of your Search Console data.

It seems that Google doesn’t want us to see the clickthrough rate for AI Overviews.

Assuming AI Overviews stay in this current form, this is also likely the highest the CTR will be. As the novelty wears off and the law of shitty clickthroughs kicks in, I would expect to see clicks reduce further.