AI CTR Falls 61% But Clicks Remain

A new analysis from Seer Interactive shows that AI Overview performance data can look more dramatic than it really is, with brand-cited pages seeing a sharp fall in click-through rate (CTR) even while actual clicks remained relatively stable.

According to the report, CTR for brand-cited pages in AI Overviews dropped by around 61% between Q3 and Q4. However, this headline figure does not reflect a straightforward collapse in performance. Instead, Seer’s dataset, which covers 5.47 million queries across 53 brands, suggests the change is largely driven by a mismatch between rapidly increasing impressions and slower-moving click growth.

In September, cited pages generated around 15.8 million impressions and 398,798 clicks, resulting in a CTR of 2.52%. By October, impressions had more than doubled to 33.1 million, while clicks increased only slightly to 400,271. As a result, CTR fell to 1.21%. The key factor here was not a drop in clicks, but the much faster growth in visibility.

This pattern suggests that October’s decline in CTR is more about scale than underperformance. As pages appear in more AI Overviews, impressions increase faster than users actually clicking through, which naturally lowers the CTR percentage even when clicks remain steady.

November, however, shows a different trend. Impressions rose further to 39.5 million, but clicks fell to 301,783, bringing CTR down to 0.76%. Unlike October, this shift suggests a genuine reduction in clicks alongside rising visibility, making the overall Q4 picture more complex.

When combined across the quarter, these monthly movements produce the reported 61% CTR decline. But Seer’s breakdown highlights why analysing aggregated figures without context can be misleading. Month-by-month changes tell a more detailed story than the headline percentage alone.

One of the key limitations of the study is that it cannot determine why impressions increased in October. It is unclear whether Google began showing AI Overviews for more queries that already included brand citations, or whether the brands earned additional citations through improved SEO performance. Both scenarios are possible, but neither can be confirmed from the available data.

This uncertainty is important because it affects how performance should be interpreted. Rising impressions could reflect stronger visibility gained through optimisation, or simply changes in how Google displays AI Overviews. Without deeper query-level analysis, it is difficult to distinguish between the two.

This challenge is not unique to Seer’s findings. Other studies have also shown that AI Overviews tend to reduce CTR when they appear. Research from Ahrefs, covering 146 million search results, found that AI Overviews are triggered in around 20.5% of queries, particularly informational and question-based searches. Similarly, SISTRIX reported a 59% drop in CTR for position one listings when AI Overviews are present in Germany, while Pew Research found users clicked just 8% of the time with AI Overviews compared with 15% without them.

Taken together, these studies suggest a consistent pattern: AI Overviews tend to reduce click-through rates, but the impact varies depending on query type and user intent. Seer’s findings add another layer by showing that falling CTR does not always mean fewer clicks, especially when impressions are rising at a faster pace.

The report also notes that brand-cited pages tend to receive around 120% more clicks per impression compared with uncited pages within AI Overview results. However, even with citations, these pages still lag behind traditional organic results without AI Overviews by around 38%. This suggests that while citations improve visibility, they do not fully restore previous levels of organic performance.

Interestingly, Seer also observed that organic CTR on AI Overview SERPs increased from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026. However, the researchers caution against interpreting this as a full recovery, describing it instead as a temporary stabilisation rather than a clear upward trend.

The broader takeaway is that CTR alone does not tell the full story of performance in AI-driven search results. A declining CTR may not necessarily indicate weaker performance if impressions are growing at a faster rate or if visibility is expanding across more queries.

For marketers and SEO professionals, this means that both clicks and impressions need to be evaluated together rather than in isolation. A flat or growing click total alongside rising impressions tells a very different story from a falling CTR on its own.

Looking ahead, the key question is whether increased AI Overview visibility will eventually translate into higher click volumes, or whether citations will continue to expand impressions without delivering proportional traffic gains. The answer will determine how valuable AI Overview exposure truly is in practice.

For now, the data suggests that performance is not simply declining, but shifting. Understanding that distinction will be crucial for interpreting future changes in search visibility and traffic trends.