During my SEO and Content Writing career, I have never experienced such a massive drop in click-through rates. Fortunately or unfortunately, the credit goes to the AI Overviews.
The trend of AI summaries has increased so much these days. The reason? Well, that’s straightforward!
‘Google AI Overviews answer users’ queries directly on the search page’
Due to this shift, content creators, SEO professionals, and businesses have to put in so much effort to sustain their click-through rates and traffic.
You Should Know That
Ahrefs News has announced a recent study on about 300,000 keywords that have informational intent. Out of these, about half (150,000) keywords with AI Overviews are likely to lose clicks, as compared to the ones with no AI Overviews.
Source: AI Overview Keywords – by Louise Linehan
So the question arises, “How to stay in the top positions while competing with such trends?”
Let’s discuss this!
I am Reshaeel Sarwar, an SEO and Content Writing Expert with 6+ years of experience. In the following blog, I will be sharing my research and methodologies to stay ahead of the curve in the AI Overview competition.
Methodology by Ryan Law
(Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs)
I have carefully read the methodology conducted by Ryan Law and will discuss it here first to clarify your concept.
Ryan has researched about 300,000 keywords from the Ahrefs database. As mentioned before, 150,000 out of these keywords are with AI Overviews, while the remaining ones are not included in this list.
When he compiled the Google Search Console (GSC) data for each of these keywords, he recorded a significant drop in CTR rates from March 2024 to March 2025.
Where Do AI Keywords Appear?
I personally use Ahrefs for most of my research and keyword findings. So I will be sharing my findings as per this app, because this is one of the most trusted AI Overview tools so far.
To know keywords for which AI Overviews are triggering, you have to use the Ahrefs AI Overview feature. What you need to do includes:
➥ Navigate to Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Feature
➥ Go to the “Organic Keywords” option
➥ Click “Add Filter” & select “AI Overviews”
➥ Click “Filter”
Findings
It is recorded that in March 2024, the average CTR for position 1 on informational keywords was 0.056. By March 2025, this CTR dropped to 0.031.
For searches triggering AI Overviews, the average CTR was 0.073 in March 2024. By March 2025, it fell sharply to 0.026.
Indeed, a massive drop in organic clicks, which highlights the growing impact of AI Overviews on search traffic.
Based on this data, you can easily predict the CTR for AI Overview keywords if AI Overviews SEO had not been introduced. Considering this, I calculated the click drop AI has brought for informational keywords.
Calculation
As I mentioned before, the CTR for Position 1 keyword dropped from 0.056 to 0.031.
Drop Ratio = 0.031/0.056
After that, I applied the same drop ratio to the original CTR for AI Overview keywords:
Original CTR = 0.073
If AI Overviews had not launched yet, I predicted the CTR to be about:
Forecasted CTR = 0.073 × (0.031/0.056)
Forcasted CTR = 0.040
After this, I compared the forecasted CTR with the actual CTR that I saw for AI Overview keywords, which is 0.026.
At last, I calculated the drop impact as follows:
CTR Drop = (0.026 – 0.040)/0.040 = -34.5%
This means that the presence of AI Overviews is reducing the position #1 CTR by about 34.5%.
👉 Why This Matters?
If the click-through rate is low, it means that the keyword ranking in the # 01 position does not guarantee high traffic turnover. This is why, brands and online businesses must think beyond just keyword rankings.
👉 What To Do?
You just need to consider a few factors in mind.
➥ Focus on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EEAT)
➥ Drive more brand search
➥ Try to invest more time in conducting research for content that AI can not summarize easily. ➥ These include case studies, opinion pieces, original research, etc.
To put it shortly, you need to make your content a trusted source that users click, even if AI gives them an exact answer.
➥ Want to know exactly “How to rank in AI Overviews, click Here.
Let’s Conclude!
I have personally witnessed a 21-43% drop in the keyword rankings after the AI Overviews.
As per my experience, I have noticed that these overviews act as Featured Snippets, which answer the user’s query directly and in a concise way, which leads to Zero Click Searches.
It is interesting that even though Google says that “links in AI Overviews get more clicks than regular search results,” they still do not give us a way to clearly see which clicks and impressions are coming from AI Overviews in Search Console data.
And if the situation persists, I predict even more decrease in CTR for informational keywords.