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AI search and clicks · Agency study · 2025

AI Overviews and click-through rate: 15 months of client data

Organic CTR on queries with an AI Overview fell 61% over the period, from 1.76% to 0.61%. Our summary of what it found, what to do about it, and what to keep in mind.

By SEOPapers research team · Updated · How we research

SourceSeer Interactive
PublishedNovember 4, 2025
TypeAgency study
Sample3,119 informational queries, 42 client organizations, 25.1 million organic impressions (June 2024 to September 2025)

The short version: Being cited in the AI Overview matters: it is the difference between a small loss and a large one.

What they studied

Seer took Search Console and Google Ads data for informational queries across 42 clients and compared click-through rates for queries that show an AI Overview with those that do not, month by month.

Key findings

  • Organic CTR on queries with an AI Overview fell 61% over the period, from 1.76% to 0.61%.
  • Queries without an AI Overview also fell, by 41%, from 2.72% to 1.62%. Clicks are dropping across informational search, not only where AI Overviews appear.
  • Paid CTR on queries with an AI Overview fell 68%.
  • Brands cited inside the AI Overview got about 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than brands that were not cited.

Key learnings

  • Being cited in the AI Overview matters: it is the difference between a small loss and a large one.
  • Benchmark your CTR against queries without AI Overviews too, or you will blame AI for a decline that is happening everywhere.
  • Review paid search on informational terms; it lost clicks faster than organic.

Things to keep in mind

  • Correlation only. The author notes that stronger brands may be both more likely to be cited and more likely to be clicked.
  • Agency client data, not a random sample of the web. The paid sample is much smaller, so its figures are less certain.
  • Informational queries only. Commercial and local queries behave differently.

Read it alongside

Source

Agency study by Tracy McDonald, published by Seer Interactive, November 4, 2025.

We read the source and checked every figure on this page against it on October 13, 2026. Summaries and learnings are ours. Spotted an error? Tell us.

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