The click data on AI Overviews is no longer in dispute. Ahrefs measured a 34.5 percent drop in clicks to the number-one organic result when an AI Overview is shown, and revised that figure to 58 percent in December 2025. Pew Research’s July 2025 data showed CTR on traditional search results drops to 8 percent when an AI summary appears, compared to 15 percent without one. The pattern is consistent across multiple sources.
The question is not whether AI Overviews are eroding clicks. They are. The question is what to do about it.
Three things the 2025-2026 data has clarified.
One: the CTR drop is concentrated on the top organic result.
Positions 2-10 on the SERP saw smaller CTR drops than position 1 when AI Overviews appeared. The Ahrefs study showed positions 2-3 dropping 18-22 percent, positions 4-10 dropping 6-12 percent. The top spot took the hardest hit because AI Overviews most often display the answer the position-1 page would have given the user, removing the need to click.
The implication: ranking #1 in 2026 is less valuable than ranking #1 in 2023 was, but ranking 2-10 is roughly as valuable as before. The CTR redistribution is uneven across positions.
Two: the CTR drop is concentrated on informational queries.
Transactional queries (“buy X”, “X near me”, “X coupon”) saw small CTR drops when AI Overviews appeared, because users still need to click through to complete the transaction. Informational queries (“what is X”, “how does X work”, “X explained”) saw the largest CTR drops because the AI Overview answers the question without requiring a click.
The implication: the brands hit hardest are the ones whose traffic was concentrated on top-of-funnel informational keywords. Brands with mid- and bottom-funnel intent traffic saw less impact.
Three: AI Overviews appear inconsistently across query types.
Google has not committed to showing AI Overviews on every query. Many queries still show only traditional SERP results. The triggers are not fully public, but the pattern observed: informational queries with clear answer-shape get AI Overviews more often than ambiguous or sentiment-driven queries.
The implication: the CTR damage to your specific keywords depends on whether your keywords trigger AI Overviews at all. Some brands lose 40 percent of traffic. Others lose 5 percent. The variance is high.
Three strategic shifts that follow from the data.
One: traditional position-1 rankings on informational queries are no longer the goal.
If a position-1 ranking on a high-volume informational query loses 58 percent of clicks to AI Overviews, the ROI calculation on optimizing for that ranking changes. The brand still wants the ranking, but the resource allocation tilts toward optimizing for the AI citation slot inside the Overview as much as toward the SERP position itself.
This is the work GEO addresses directly. Being in the AI Overview citation list partially recovers the lost click revenue, because users who click “see all sources” on the Overview reach your page anyway.
Two: mid- and bottom-funnel content gets relatively more valuable.
Pages that target queries where users need to click through (comparison pages, pricing pages, alternatives pages, decision-stage queries) saw smaller CTR drops. Allocating content investment toward these page types produces better ROI in 2026 than continuing to invest heavily in top-of-funnel definitional content.
The brand still needs the top-of-funnel pages for citation and topical authority. But the relative share of investment shifts toward mid- and bottom-funnel.
Three: brand recall matters more.
When AI Overviews answer the question without a click, the user still forms an impression of which brands are credible authorities. Pages that get cited inside the Overview, even if the user does not click, build brand awareness. Brand search volume becomes a more important downstream metric than direct organic clicks.
The brands that watched their organic clicks drop but their brand search volume rise are the ones whose AI citation strategy is working. The brands that watched both drop are losing both layers.
Specific tactical responses to the CTR erosion:
Move one: rewrite top-of-funnel pages to be answer-first.
If your high-volume informational queries are losing clicks to AI Overviews, the answer-first rewrite at minimum ensures your page gets cited inside the Overview. We covered this with three real before-and-after rewrites in Answer-first writing: before-and-after on real B2B pages.
Move two: invest content effort in mid- and bottom-funnel pages.
If you have been producing 8 top-of-funnel posts a month and 2 bottom-funnel pages a month, flip the ratio. The bottom-funnel pages convert at higher rates per click and lose less click volume to AI Overviews.
Move three: track brand search volume as a primary metric.
If your AI citation strategy is working, you will see brand search volume rise while direct organic clicks fall. Google Search Console under “Performance” → “Queries” filtered by brand-name queries is the simplest tracking method. Watch the trend monthly.
NetPageTwo’s organic profile is too young to read CTR shifts. We will publish a 90-day Field Note when the data is real. The current strategy is to invest heavily in the structural and entity work that drives AI citation candidacy, on the bet that the CTR erosion compounds further over the next 12 months.
If the bet is wrong, we will know in 6-9 months and the strategy adjusts. The cost of being wrong is moderate (some content effort spent on AI citation that did not pay off). The cost of being right and not having invested would have been higher.
Pull your Search Console data for the last 90 days. Filter for queries that have lost CTR while maintaining or improving position. Those are the queries where AI Overviews have taken your clicks. They are the priority list for the answer-first and schema rewrites.
If you want us to run that analysis and ship the rewrites on your top 10 affected pages, book the fit call.
Related reading:
– Why AI Overviews killed your CTR (and the 3 moves that work)
– Answer-first writing: before-and-after on real B2B pages
– GEO 101: Generative Engine Optimization Explained
– NetPageTwo vs a traditional SEO agency
