AI Overviews: Why you’re getting fewer clicks from Google — the figures behind it (2026)

300,000 search terms analysed: an AI Overview in the search results was associated with a 34.5 per cent lower click-through rate in 2025 — and 58 per cent in the follow-up measurement in December 2025. Here are the figures, the caveats, and what an SME actually does when the answer moves up into the search results themselves.

When Google displays an AI response at the top of the search results, clicks on the top position drop significantly. Ahrefs measured this across 300,000 keywords: in spring 2025, the drop was 34.5 per cent — and when they repeated the analysis in December 2025, it had risen to 58 per cent. If you’re getting fewer visitors from Google, without your rankings having changed, it’s probably not that you’ve done anything wrong. It’s the game that’s changed — and here’s what you can do about it.

What are AI Overviews?

AI Overviews are Google’s own AI-generated answers, which appear above the classic blue links. Instead of choosing between ten results, the user is presented with a ready-made summary featuring a small number of source references. Google rolled them out in the US in May 2024 and has since expanded to Europe — they’re appearing in an increasing number of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian searches.

The consequence is simple: many users get their answers without clicking on anything at all. The search result has gone from being a list to choose from to an answer to read.

The figures: what the Ahrefs study actually showed

The most frequently cited dataset comes from Ahrefs, which compared 150,000 search terms with an AI Overview and 150,000 information-seeking search terms without one — the study can be found here. The first measurement (March 2024 versus March 2025) showed that the presence of an AI Overview was associated with a 34.5 per cent lower click-through rate for the top-ranked page. In December 2025, Ahrefs repeated the analysis — and the drop had risen to 58 per cent.

Click-through rate for position 1	Before AI Overviews	December 2025
Keywords with AI Overview	7.3%	1.6
Information search terms without AI Overview	7.6%	3.9

Look at the table again: even search terms without AI answers have fallen — but search terms with AI Overview have fallen to less than a quarter of their original level. A top position for a keyword with an AI Overview now generates fewer clicks than a position in the middle of page 1 did two years ago.

One important caveat, which Ahrefs itself points out: the figures represent correlations measured across search terms, not a controlled experiment, and they are dominated by English-language searches. However, the trend is confirmed by several independent measurements — and by what Danish companies can see for themselves in their Search Console.

An independent study — and Google’s objection

The most significant independent confirmation comes from the Pew Research Centre, which tracked people rather than search terms: 900 American adults and their 68,879 Google searches. Pew’s analysis found that users clicked on a standard search result in 8 per cent of visits when there was an AI response on the page — compared with 15 per cent when there wasn’t. And the sources within the AI response? They were only clicked on in 1 per cent of visits.

To be fair: Google has publicly disputed the Pew study’s methodology and claims the sample of searches is skewed. This is worth noting — but bear in mind that two completely different methods (Ahrefs’ keyword data and Pew’s behavioural data) point in the same direction, and that Google has not presented any figures of its own to show the opposite.

Does it affect all searches equally?

No — and this is important when assessing your own risk. AI Overviews most often appear in informational searches: ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘what is’ questions, where a summarised answer makes sense. These are precisely the kinds of searches that blog posts and guides thrive on — which is why content pages are affected first and hardest.

Searches with an intent to buy or take action (“emergency electrician Aalborg”, “accountant’s fee”) are less likely to trigger an AI answer these days, and navigational searches for a specific company name almost never do. But the trend is clear: the proportion of searches with AI answers has grown steadily since the roll-out began — and the commercial searches that still slip through the net in Google are increasingly being directed to ChatGPT and Perplexity instead. So you won’t escape this shift by waiting for it to blow over.

Do fewer clicks mean fewer customers?

Not necessarily — and that’s the most important nuance in the whole discussion. The clicks are disappearing because the answer has been moved up into the search result itself. Customers are still there; they’re just reading the answer instead of visiting ten websites. The battle is therefore no longer just about rankings — it’s about being in the answer: as a cited source, as a mentioned company, as a recommendation.

This changes what you should be measuring. A website that loses clicks but gains citations in AI answers may well be in a stronger position than before — whilst a site that is neither clicked on nor cited has, in effect, disappeared. These two outcomes look exactly the same in a traditional ranking report, and that is precisely why many companies misjudge where they actually stand right now.

How do I measure my visibility in AI Overviews?

The short, honest answer: Google Search Console doesn’t show this directly. Impressions in an AI Overview are counted as part of your regular impression figures, but they are triggered without a click — so the typical sign is rising impressions and a falling click-through rate at the same time. We’ve measured this phenomenon using our own data and separated the two types of searches in a dedicated analysis that you can use as a guide.

If you want to measure this systematically, you’ll need to ask the search engines themselves: run the queries your customers ask against ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, and count how often your business is mentioned and quoted. This can be done manually once a month — or automatically: this is precisely the kind of measurement the Geoa platform carries out on an ongoing basis.

Five specific things you can do right now

1. Check your starting point. The free test scores your site across the 15 dimensions that determine whether AI can find, understand and cite you — 60 seconds, no login required.
2. Open the door to AI crawlers. If GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot are blocked in your robots.txt, you’ve made yourself invisible — our analysis showed just how many people are doing this without realising it.
3. Write in a way that can be cited. Direct answers early in the text, questions as headings, short paragraphs — these are the blocks that AI responses pick out. The guide is here.
4. Make your facts machine-readable. Structured data and a llms.txt make your business unambiguous to search engines — both are free to set up.
5. Measure the right things. Track citations and mentions in AI responses alongside your clicks — not just rankings. Start with the basics using the guide ‘How to make your business visible on Google’ — and in ChatGPT.

AI Overviews aren’t just a passing fad. But precisely because very few Nordic businesses have started working with AI visibility, it’s still inexpensive to get a head start — and the first step costs nothing.

Frequently asked questions

What is an AI Overview?

Google’s AI-generated answers, which appear above the classic blue links. The user is presented with a ready-made summary with few source references — and therefore clicks through far less often. They were rolled out in the US in May 2024 and are now appearing in an increasing number of Danish, Swedish and Norwegian searches.

How much do clicks drop when there is an AI Overview?

Ahrefs’ analysis of 300,000 keywords showed a 34.5% lower click-through rate for the top position (March 2025) and a 58% drop in the follow-up analysis in December 2025. The click-through rate for position 1 on search terms with an AI Overview fell from 7.3 per cent to 1.6 per cent.

How can my business feature in the AI answers?

Make sure the AI crawlers aren’t blocked, write direct, quotable answers to customers’ questions, and make your facts machine-readable using structured data and a llms.txt. The free test shows you in 60 seconds what’s missing from your site.