Since the rollout of Google’s AI Overviews, formerly known as the Search Generative Experience (SGE), the SEO world has been buzzing with concern. Many digital marketers and content creators have suspected that these AI-generated summaries are having a significant impact on the traditional search engine results pages (SERPs). Now, we have compelling data to support those suspicions.
Two new in-depth studies, one by SEO platform Ahrefs and another by performance marketing agency Amsive, have confirmed what many in the industry feared: Google’s AI Overviews are siphoning clicks away from organic listings, especially for non-branded, informational search queries.
And the numbers aren’t subtle.
AI Overviews and the Decline of Organic Clicks
Ahrefs conducted a massive analysis using a combination of their own data and Google Search Console (GSC) insights. By comparing click-through rates (CTR) from March 2024 (pre-AI Overviews) to March 2025 (post-rollout in the U.S.), they found a sharp 34.5% drop in CTR for the first organic position when AI Overviews appeared.
This isn’t just a minor shift in user behaviour, it’s a fundamental change in how searchers interact with results. Traditionally, ranking first in Google came with a big traffic payoff. That advantage is now being eaten away by AI summaries that sit right at the top of the page, offering quick answers and reducing the need to click through to a website.
Amsive’s findings echoed this trend. Their team analysed over 700,000 keywords across 10 websites and five industries. On average, they observed a 15.49% drop in CTR when AI Overviews were present. However, in more extreme cases, the losses were far worse, up to 37.04% when AI Overviews overlapped with featured snippets.
The implication here is serious: even if your site ranks highly, your traffic might be dropping simply because users are getting what they need directly from Google’s AI-generated content.
Non-Branded Keywords Are Taking the Biggest Hit
One of the more nuanced insights from Amsive’s research is that not all search terms are affected equally. Branded keywords, those that include a company or product name, rarely trigger AI Overviews. In fact, they only show up for branded terms about 4.79% of the time. And interestingly, when they do, branded queries actually see a positive impact: a +18.68% increase in CTR.
But the picture is much grimmer for non-branded, informational queries, those broad, top-of-funnel searches that form the backbone of most content marketing strategies.
Amsive reported a staggering 19.98% average CTR decline for non-branded terms when AI Overviews were present. Ahrefs took this a step further by focusing almost entirely on informational-intent queries, with 99.2% of their analysed keywords overlapping with AI Overview results. This suggests that informational content, the very thing many websites use to build authority and traffic, is being pushed down and drowned out.
And it gets worse the lower you are on the page. Amsive found that keywords ranking outside of the top three positions saw a 27.04% drop in CTR. So if your site is already struggling to reach the top spots, AI Overviews make it even harder to earn clicks.
Google’s Narrative vs. Reality
Google has claimed that AI Overviews actually result in “higher quality clicks.” The idea is that people who do click through from AI Overviews are more intentional, and therefore more valuable. This could theoretically result in better on-site engagement or conversions, despite fewer total visits.
But that’s a hard sell when overall visibility is plummeting and clicks are declining. For content creators and site owners who’ve spent years optimizing their pages to rank on page one, the introduction of AI Overviews feels like the rug has been pulled out from under them.
What’s more, AI Overviews frequently cite sources without linking prominently to them, or exclude them entirely. This means many high-quality sources are now contributing to the AI’s summaries without getting any of the traffic benefits. It’s an SEO ecosystem where content creators feed the machine, but get less and less in return.
Amsive highlights this disconnect in their full study, which can be read here. Meanwhile, Ahrefs provides a data-driven breakdown here that’s worth reading in full if you’re trying to understand the technical depth of this shift.
A Structural Change to the Search Landscape
It’s important to understand what AI Overviews are doing structurally to the SERPs. Rather than simply adding another feature like a rich snippet or a knowledge panel, AI Overviews essentially dominate the top of the results page. They combine summaries from multiple sources, often spanning entire screen heights on mobile or desktop, pushing traditional results further and further down.
This is not just a UI update, it’s a reimagining of how Google presents answers. And it creates a more closed loop of information where users are encouraged to stay within Google’s environment, reducing the need to explore external websites.
Seer Interactive has also weighed in on this shift, reporting record-low click-through rates for both organic and paid search results since the launch of AI Overviews. Their findings reinforce what Ahrefs and Amsive are seeing: even paid ads are suffering, suggesting a broader pattern of user behaviour being reshaped.
What This Means for SEO Strategies
If you’re in digital marketing, publishing, or e-commerce, the implications of these studies are enormous. Traditional SEO strategies that focus on high-ranking blog posts or guides for informational queries may no longer produce the same returns.
Instead, marketers may need to pivot. This could include:
- Focusing more on branded content and increasing direct brand recognition.
- Optimising content to be featured in AI Overviews, although there is no clear guidance on how to be consistently included.
- Shifting attention to channels outside of Google, such as social media, newsletters, and direct outreach to drive traffic more reliably.
Furthermore, there’s an emerging conversation around the ethics and economics of content. If Google is aggregating information from publishers without sending traffic back to them, what incentive do creators have to keep producing high-quality, reliable content?
This question has even reached legal and policy circles, with some experts comparing AI Overviews to the early controversies around Google News and publisher rights. The difference now is that it’s happening on the primary search interface, not a secondary news portal.
What’s Next?
Google has so far remained firm in its messaging, insisting that AI Overviews improve the search experience by making information more accessible and interactions more efficient. That may be true for users, but it raises complex questions for everyone else in the search ecosystem.
If publishers, bloggers, small businesses, and ecommerce stores are seeing their traffic dry up, the value proposition of creating content fundamentally changes. The broader implication is a potential degradation of the open web, where fewer independent sites can afford to invest in quality content if they’re not being rewarded with visibility and traffic.
This is the heart of the debate: convenience for users versus sustainability for content creators. And as AI Overviews expand to more markets and languages, these tensions will only intensify.
In the meantime, understanding this shift is essential. If your traffic has dipped recently and you’re struggling to explain why, you’re not alone. The rise of AI Overviews represents a structural change in Google Search, one that requires new thinking, new strategies, and perhaps even a new relationship between platforms and creators.
For a deeper dive into the numbers and implications, you can read Ahrefs‘ full report here and Amsive‘s analysis here.
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By Manesh Ram, Digital Marketing Specialist. Please follow @maneshram & Meta
