Are AI Overviews Eating Your Clicks? — What's Next is Everything

Ahrefs released some interesting analysis for the SEO community: Google’s AI Overviews, far from boosting site visits, are slashing clickthrough rates by an average of 34.5% for top-ranking keywords. The analysis, based on 300,000 keywords, compared informational queries with and without AI Overviews in search results. Despite Google’s claims that AI-linked content gets more clicks, Ahrefs’ cold, hard data tells a different story—CTR for position one dropped from 0.056 to 0.031 between March 2024 and March 2025 on non-AI Overview queries, and an even steeper plunge for those with the AI summary in place.

The study drilled deeper, forecasting what CTR should have been for AI Overview keywords had the feature not rolled out—0.040. The actual number in March 2025? A meager 0.026. That delta gives us the headline 34.5% decline. The researchers attribute this to AI Overviews essentially answering user queries directly on the SERP—much like Featured Snippets, but beefed up with citations that don’t necessarily drive clicks. The paradox? Google says users are more likely to click links within these summaries, yet they’ve made it impossible to isolate that data in Search Console.

The takeaway? SEO pros may need to rethink how they measure success in a world of zero-click searches. If the trend continues, content strategies will have to evolve beyond just ranking—perhaps optimizing for being the citation, not just aresult. And as the novelty of AI Overviews wears off, clickthrough rates could shrink even further. In short: if your traffic suddenly dips, it may not be your content—it might just be the AI middleman.