Zero-Click Searches and AI Overviews: Why Clicks Fall and What to Do

Clicks fall on many queries because the answer appears on the results page itself, and several studies measure a CTR drop when an AI Overview is present. Google, on the other hand, says the total volume of clicks to websites is "relatively stable." Both things can be true at the same time. The practical response is to measure by query type, aim for the citation and track more than clicks, as we see in the guide to SEO, AEO and GEO.

Quick summary

• In March 2025, Pew measured 8% of visits with a click on a traditional link when an AI summary was present, versus 15% without one (a sample of 900 US adults).
• Ahrefs estimated, with December 2025 data, that an AI Overview correlates with a 58% lower CTR for position 1. Seer saw CTR fall through December 2025 and partially recover in 2026.
• Google says total organic clicks are relatively stable, without publishing the numbers.
• The impact is concentrated: questions, comparisons and informational queries are the most exposed; transactional ones far less.
• Zero-click is not new: before AI Overviews expanded, most Google searches already ended without a click on any result.
• What to do: be the cited source, offer what the summary does not deliver and measure impressions, branded searches and conversions, not just clicks.

How to read this: if you are new to the topic, read "Do clicks really fall?" and "What should you do?" If you already work in SEO, go to the studies table, the Search Console diagnosis and the example.

Do clicks really fall when there is an AI Overview?

In the studies that look at queries with an AI Overview, yes: CTR tends to be lower than on similar queries without one. But the size of the drop varies with the method, and the effect is not the same for every kind of search. The table summarizes the studies I checked against the original sources.

Study	Method	Result	Limit
Pew Research Center (Jul. 2025)	900 US adults with browsing monitored in March 2025; 68,879 Google searches, 12,593 with an AI summary	Clicks on traditional links: 8% with a summary and 15% without. Clicks on links inside the summary: 1%. Session ended: 26% vs 16%	US only, Google only, voluntary panel; Google's summary changes over time
Ahrefs (Feb. 2026)	300,000 keywords (150,000 with an AI Overview and 150,000 informational without), aggregated Search Console data, average desktop CTR, Dec. 2023 vs Dec. 2025	Position 1 CTR: 0.016 with an AI Overview, against 0.037 projected without it, about 58% lower	Correlation, not proof of cause; desktop only; position 1 CTR on informational queries without an AI Overview also fell, from 0.076 to 0.039
Seer Interactive (Apr. 2026)	53 brands, 5.47 million queries and 2.43 billion impressions, January 2025 to February 2026	Organic CTR on queries with an AI Overview: floor of 1.3% in Dec. 2025 and 2.4% in Feb. 2026	An agency's portfolio of 53 brands; Seer asks for a directional reading of transactional queries
SparkToro with Datos (Jul. 2024)	Click panel from Sept. 2022 to May 2024, US and EU	58.5% of searches in the US and 59.7% in the EU ended without a click	Predates the expansion of AI Overviews; zero-click includes satisfied users, frustrated ones and those who reworded the search

Seer adds a useful calculation: per 1 million impressions on informational queries, without an AI Overview there were about 33,500 organic clicks; with an AI Overview and the brand cited, about 20,743; with an AI Overview and the brand not cited, about 9,445. Being cited helps a lot, but does not bring back the previous level.

In plain English: imagine the shop window now shows the answer to the customer's question. Many people read it and walk away without coming in. The shop that appears in the window as a "source" still gets more people than the ones left out, but fewer than before the window started answering on its own.

Why do the numbers seem to contradict each other?

Because they measure different things. Pew looks at people's behavior. Ahrefs and Seer look at the CTR of specific queries. Google talks about the total volume of clicks to the web. CTR per query can fall while the total holds, if people run more searches or if clicks migrate between sites.

Google gives that explanation in Liz Reid's post of August 6, 2025, AI in Search: Driving more queries and higher quality clicks: the total volume of organic clicks to websites would be "relatively stable" year over year, and the average quality of clicks, measured by users who do not quickly return to the search, would have increased. According to the text, with AI Overviews people run more searches, with longer and new questions, and see more links on the page. The company says third-party reports with dramatic drops use flawed methodologies, but the text gives no numbers, so the claim cannot be checked from outside. The post acknowledges that for simple questions people may be satisfied by the first answer, and that traffic migrates between sites: some lose, others gain.

In plain English: if each customer buys less bread, but the street gets more customers, the bakery can sell the same total. That is how "each search yields fewer clicks" and "total clicks are stable" can both be true statements. What matters is knowing which side of the equation your site is on.

For SEO professionals: treat each source as a lens. Your own site's Search Console is the only measure that represents your business, and it is where you should test the hypotheses above. Compare by query and by page, not by the site average, and remember that position, device and country change the chance of seeing an AI Overview. Aggregate CTR mixes queries with and without a summary.

Which types of query are most affected?

Informational, question and comparison queries are the most exposed; transactional ones the least. In Seer's sample, the AI Overview appeared on 36% of informational queries, 8% of commercial ones and 5% of transactional ones. Among informational queries, 95.4% of comparison queries and 85.9% of question-style ones had an AI Overview. Even informational queries with "near me" showed an AI Overview in 76.9% of cases.

These percentages describe Seer's portfolio of 53 brands, not necessarily your market. The pattern is consistent with the feature's purpose, answering questions in fewer clicks, but your portfolio may have a different distribution. That is why a diagnosis in your own Search Console is worth more than the average of any study.

How do you diagnose the impact on your site with Search Console?

Look for pages where impressions hold or grow, average position barely changes and clicks fall. The pattern suggests the answer appears in the search itself. It does not prove the cause, but it shows where to investigate.

1. Compare equal periods. In the performance report (Search results), compare, for example, the last 90 days with the same period of the previous year.
2. Isolate informational queries. Filter for queries that start with question words, such as "how," "what," "which" and "how much," using the regular expression filter.
3. List the pages with a suspicious pattern: stable or rising impressions, stable position, falling CTR.
4. Check manually whether those queries show an AI Overview. Test in an incognito window and on more than one device, because the result varies.
5. Rank by business value. Losing clicks on a top-of-funnel query with no conversion weighs less than on a query that leads to a lead or sale.
6. Decide the action per page: strengthen it to become a cited source, shift focus to a less exposed query or accept the loss.
7. Repeat every month and log the changes you made.

Hypothetical example: an accounting blog sees the page "What is a 1099 form" with a steady average position of 2.1, impressions 20% higher and clicks 35% lower than the previous year. The hypothesis is that the summary answers the question. The action: keep the direct answer at the top, to stay a candidate for citation, and add what the summary does not deliver, such as a calculator, a step-by-step guide with screenshots and a spreadsheet template, with an invitation to the next step. The numbers are illustrative.

For SEO professionals: Search Console now has a generative AI performance report, which shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date. According to Google's help, since August 31, 2026 it has been rolled out to all sites worldwide, and properties with few impressions may not see it. The page describes only impressions, with no clicks or queries in this report, and its data comes from the "Web" type of the performance report. Use it to see which pages appear as a source, and the regular report to see the click.

What should you do so you do not depend only on the click?

Three fronts: be the cited source, offer what the summary does not deliver and strengthen the brand so people search for you by name. None guarantees a result, but together they reduce dependence on a single type of click.

• Be the source. Direct answers, specific data and a clear structure raise the chance of citation, as we detail in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Seer measured that, on informational queries, being cited brings about 120% more clicks per impression than not being cited.
• Deliver what the summary does not. In Liz Reid's post, Google says people are more likely to click on content that helps them learn more, such as an in-depth analysis, an original post or a unique perspective. Your own point of view, first-hand experience and original data are what a generic summary cannot copy. See how in original research and your own data.
• Change the query mix. Give more weight to commercial and transactional terms, where the AI Overview appears less, without abandoning the top of the funnel.
• Strengthen the brand. The same post says people increasingly search for and click on sites with forums, videos, podcasts and first-hand perspectives. Communities and video come in here, as in Reddit, YouTube and forums.
• Capture demand in the content. Clear invitations to a newsletter, a tool or contact turn a rare click into a relationship.

Which metrics should you track beyond the click?

Track impressions, branded searches, AI citations and conversions. The click is still important, but becomes one signal among several. See the full set in AI visibility metrics.

Metric	What it shows	Where to measure
Impressions in AI features	How many times your links appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode	Search Console generative AI report
CTR by query type	Where the summary "steals" clicks	Search Console, with query filters
Branded searches	Whether more people look for you by name	Search Console (queries containing the brand name)
Brand citation in AI	Whether the brand is named in answers	Periodic manual tests or a monitoring tool
Conversions and leads	The business result	Analytics and CRM

In Contentor, the Results page gathers Search Console data per project, and AI Visibility tracks, on the questions you choose, whether ChatGPT cites your brand. The two cover different parts of the picture.

For the basics of the report, see Google Search Console for beginners. The glossary explains the terms.

Frequently asked questions

What does zero-click mean?

Zero-click is a search that ends without a click on any result. The reason can be positive (the person found the answer on the page itself), neutral (they reworded the search) or negative (they gave up). According to SparkToro and Datos, more than half of Google searches already ended without a click on any result by May 2024, before AI Overviews expanded.

Do AI Overviews drive down my site's traffic?

They can drive down CTR on informational queries, especially questions and comparisons, according to Pew, Ahrefs and Seer. Google says total clicks are stable, without publishing numbers. To know what is happening to your site, compare impressions, position and CTR by query in Search Console.

Is it worth being cited in the AI Overview?

Yes, on average across the available data. Seer measured about 120% more organic clicks per impression for brands cited on informational queries, although the result is still below queries without an AI Overview. A citation is not guaranteed and does not replace traditional ranking, but it improves your relative position on the same results page.

How do I know whether my page appears in AI Overviews?

Use Search Console's generative AI performance report, rolled out to all sites on August 31, 2026, which shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page. It does not show clicks. Complement it with manual searches of your target queries and with citation monitoring tools.

Next step

Do the diagnosis from the steps above today, in one hour: compare periods, filter the question-style queries and list the pages with stable impressions and falling clicks. Then pick three to strengthen. For the next level of the path, see how to measure AI visibility. If you lack content that answers questions in depth, generate articles with AI on Contentor and review each one with your own data and examples.

Read also:

• Google AI Overviews: how to optimize to get cited
• Google AI Mode and the future of search
• SEO trends in 2026