April 22, 2025
AI Overviews officially launched in the US in May 2024, and by October, the feature had expanded to over 100 countries. Since then, AI Overviews (AIO) have caused a lot of controversy, and it only seems to be getting worse.
For quite some time, people have noticed a significant drop in clicks post AIO rollout, and Ahrefs decided to investigate this.
The study found that AI Overviews reduce average click through rates (CTR) by 34.5%.
This is a particularly interesting find after Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, claimed that AI Overviews are good for click-through rates.
“If you put content and links within AI Overviews, they get higher clickthrough rates than if you put it outside AI Overviews"
It’s no surprise that the data does not correlate with Pichai’s statement.
Let’s look at the study in a little more detail.
Ahrefs analysed 300,000 keywords from their database. They focused on keywords with informational intent, as previous studies regarding the prevalence of AI Overviews revealed that pages with informational intent triggered the most AI Overviews. 150,000 of the keywords had an AI Overview present, and the other 150,000 didn’t.
They examined data from both samples before and after the US rollout of AI Overviews and the results proved that Sundar Pichai’s statement was less than accurate.
The average CTR for informational intent keywords in position one prior to the AIO rollout was 0.056, but after the rollout it was a mere 0.031. AI Overview keywords had a CTR of 0.073 before and just 0.026 after.
It’s not just Ahrefs that have come to the conclusion that AI Overviews are lowering click through rates. Data from Similarweb pointed to AI Overviews SERPs getting 20% fewer clicks.
The online landscape is changing drastically. AI Overviews have rocked the results pages and whilst they can be beneficial in giving users access to information quickly, the effect they’re having on many people’s website performance is detrimental.
If you’re worried about the performance of your website or simply want some guidance, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the experts today.
