How AI Overviews Impact Search: Clicks Have Gone Down By 57%

Is Google destroying the very system it has enabled over these years?

This was the thought in the mind of every SEO professional last year as the Search Giant released AI Overviews.

If these overviews answered users’ queries, will they go on to click on your website? 

In an interview with The Verge, where this concern was raised, Google CEO Sundar Pichai assured that click-through rates from users will actually increase:

“It actually helps them understand, and so they engage with content underneath, too. In fact, if you put content and links within AI Overviews, they get higher clickthrough rates than if you put it outside of AI Overviews.”

On being pressed further about whether this might have a dire impact on businesses, Pichai reaffirmed his stance, saying he has to look at data on an aggregate basis. 

He added, “...it’s like an individual restaurant saying, 'I’ve started getting fewer customers this year. People have stopped eating food,’ or whatever it is. It’s not necessarily true. Some other restaurant might have opened next door that’s doing very well. So it’s tough to say.”

Well, we did look at data on an aggregate basis. And no, it’s not “another restaurant” that’s the reason, but rather it’s food getting delivered to your home without you having to go to the restaurant.

We analysed over 75,000 searches through more than 1000 top-ranking keywords, and compared their performance before and after AI Overviews were rolled out.

Long story short: Clicks have reduced by 57%. Click-through rates have reduced as well, by 35%. 

But we have proof of an increase in impressions (with data, again) to know that we’re not in the Dark Ages of SEO, but rather in a new era altogether.

Now, let’s get to the longer story.

What We Did

2025 has been a busy year for our SEO team, helping many clients navigate the rapidly changing environment.

We selected 10 clients in the B2B SaaS space, who each had:

• A domain rating (DR) of 50 or higher in Ahrefs
• At least 1,000 organic keyword rankings in 2024

Using Ahrefs' “AI Overview” SERP filter, we identified 1,044 keywords across these clients that were being sourced in Google’s AI Overview feature as of April 2025.

We then pulled Google Search Console data for each of these keywords for the month of September 2024 and compared them to April 2025.

Why this timeline?

Because September 2024 was the last clean month before global AI Overview rollout, and because we can cover Google’s March 2025 Core Update, which really took the reach of AI Overviews to another level.

For fair comparison, we excluded any keywords that were not ranking in September 2024.

What We Found: Fewer Clicks, Smaller CTRs, But More Impressions

After AI Overviews, clicks to our clients’ pages dropped by 57%...

…and CTR plummeted by 35%

It’s easy to explain the reason behind these two findings: why would your users head to your website if their query is already answered?

Ahrefs’ findings were very similar to ours: they reported 34.5% lower CTR for the top-ranking page, compared to similar informational keywords that didn’t trigger an overview.

In another research conducted by Amsive, they came out with similar findings as well: keywords that now trigger AI Overviews saw a CTR decline of -15.49%, keywords ranking outside the top 3 positions experienced a 27% CTR decline. 

So, is the situation actually that bleak? 

Not exactly. Here’s where it gets interesting. 

While our clients saw a big dip in clicks, they saw a rise in their impressions.

Their impressions increased by ~20%, indicating pages still appeared (in fact more often) in search results and could contribute to more brand visibility.

And guess what? There was only a very negligible change in the average ranking positions. 

This means that the traffic loss wasn’t due to ranking drops or visibility, but purely because users stopped clicking through.

In other words: It’s not you, it’s the AI Overviews!

Now, let's dive just a little bit deeper into what our data showed us.

Which Parts of the Funnel Are Getting Hit Hardest by AI Overviews?

Top-of-funnel keywords are most impacted by AI Overviews. These broad, informational queries are now being answered directly in the SERP, often before anyone even clicks to a website.

It makes sense - AI overviews aren’t launched as frequently when your search gets more and more specific to a topic, brand, or action.

Of the 1044 AI-Overviews-triggering keywords that we analyzed, 84% or 876 of them were top-of-funnel: Informational queries like “what is customer onboarding” or “how to build a SaaS sales funnel.”

MOFU keywords like comparison or solution-aware queries (ex, “best onboarding software”) and BOFU keywords like branded terms or high-intent queries (ex, “buy onboarding software”) only constituted a total of 16% of the keywords that led to AI Overviews.

What This Data Means: Organic Search Has Changed

Your content might be sourced in the AI Overview. But it might still not invite a click.  

This is a big, big change in how we think about Organic Search.

With AI Overviews taking over prime real estate, even high-ranking pages can get overlooked. 

It’s no longer enough to appear in the top 3 search results. Unless your content gets explicitly cited or adds value beyond the summary, your overall brand visibility for informational queries is at risk. 

Solution: Ways to Optimize for AI Overviews

Here are ten things you can do:

1. Engineer Direct Answers: Write clear, extractable statements that LLMs can quote directly without reinterpretation.
2. Prioritize Fact Density: Include verified statistics, data points, and research findings that LLMs prioritize for authoritative information.
3. Implement Entity-Rich Structure: Explicitly define key people, places, concepts, and relationships to clarify contextual connections.
4. Craft Quote-Worthy Statements: Write concise, well-phrased insights that function as standalone quotable material.
5. Build Authority Signals: Secure citations from reputable sites, Wikipedia mentions, and academic references that LLMs use for credibility verification.
6. Optimize Question-Answer Patterns: Use exact user question phrasings with immediate, clear answers following each question.
7. Maintain Recency Indicators: Add timestamps, update notices, and current references to signal content freshness.
8. Develop Comprehensive Topical Coverage: Create content clusters addressing every potential user question to become the definitive topical source.
9. Use Schema Markup Strategically: Implement structured data to explicitly communicate content meaning and relevance to LLMs.
10. Monitor Citation Performance: Track LLM quotation patterns to refine your approach based on actual AI behavior.

Examples of LLM-optimized Content

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Ways to Strengthen Content That Will Get You the Clicks

No SEO strategy is built on a single trick. Try to hit those AI Overview citations, while also ensuring you have a strong content repository that sits outside their radar.

Focus on MOFU and BOFU keywords: These are less likely to trigger AI Overviews and more likely to lead to website clicks, and thus, conversions.

Create content that can’t be summarized easily: Tools, templates, calculators, or opinion-led pieces stand out.

Conclusion

The changes happening in SEO are new, but that doesn’t mean you should take them lightly. We’re certainly not in SEO Doom, but we need to change our approach to reflect today’s scenario. 

To quote Pichai again:

“I remain optimistic. Empirically, what we are seeing throughout the years, I think human curiosity is boundless.”

AI Overviews are here to stay. With Google announcing the launch of AI mode, it’s clear that this is going to be the direction search will take.

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There was a time when SEO’s gold medal was bagging that top 3 spot. Not so much anymore. 

SaaS brands have to future-proof their content such that they get picked by AI models. In addition to traditional SEO, AEO or AISO strategies must be a part of every organic marketing engine.

At TripleDart, we’re ahead of the curve in helping SaaS brands solve this problem. We’re helping several companies gain LLM visibility, fine-tune their content, and chart out strategies that actually belong to this year. 

Get in touch with us if you want your SEO to work in this age of AI.