Google AI Reduces Clicks by 58% to Top-Ranking Pages

Ahrefs has updated its study on the impact of Google AI Overviews on organic click-through rates, using data from December 2025, and found the presence of an AI Overview now correlates with a 58% reduction in click-through rate for the top-ranking page. 

The original study, published in April 2025, found a 34.5% reduction. The research was based on 300,000 keywords, split evenly between those triggering an AI Overview and those with informational intent and no AI Overview.

The methodology compares the expected click-through rate for AI Overview keywords against the actual rate, using the decline in non-AI Overview keywords as a baseline to account for broader shifts in search behaviour. The data suggests that for every 100 clicks a top-ranking page could historically earn, Google now keeps 58. ahrefs

The impact is not limited to first position. Ahrefs tracked the click-through rate effect across all ten positions.

The finding is corroborated by Seer Interactive, which found organic CTR down between 49.4% and 65.2%, Kevin Indig put the figure at above 50%, Authoritas at 47.5%, and the Daily Mail reported reductions of 80-90% on its own properties. The consistency across studies points to a structural shift rather than an outlier result.

For financial services content teams and marketers who have built traffic strategies around organic search, the practical implication is that ranking well is no longer sufficient. A page that ranks first for a query with an AI Overview attached is seeing less than half the traffic that position once delivered.

Full analysis: Arefs

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