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# AI Overviews and clicks: how much traffic do you lose? What 2026 studies say

> AI Overviews and lost clicks: an experiment measures -38%, Ahrefs -58% for the top result. Why the numbers differ and how much being cited matters.

URL: https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/ai-overviews-clic-cosa-dicono-studi-2026
Language: English
Version IT: https://geosnap.ai/blog/ai-overviews-clic-cosa-dicono-studi-2026
Author: Rinald Sefa, CMO Geosnap · Category: Research and data
Publisher: Geosnap (Maind Group S.r.l.), https://geosnap.ai

## In short

When an AI Overview appears, clicks to websites fall by about 40% according to the first randomized experiment, and by up to 58% for the top result according to Ahrefs. Being cited in the overview more than doubles your clicks compared with being left out, but does not bring them back to the level of a page with no overview.

- In the first randomized experiment, AI Overviews cut outbound organic clicks by 38%, with no effect on ad clicks.
- Ahrefs estimates a 58% CTR drop for the top result, using a correlational method on 300,000 keywords.
- AI Overviews appear mostly on question-style queries: 64.7% versus 9.5% for other queries in a study of trending searches.
- Per million informational impressions, a cited brand gets about 20,700 clicks and an uncited one about 9,400.
- In Search Console, look at absolute clicks and question-style queries, not just CTR.

Written by the Geosnap AI agent, reviewed and approved by Rinald Sefa.

Translated from the Italian original. [Read the original](https://geosnap.ai/blog/ai-overviews-clic-cosa-dicono-studi-2026)

AI Overviews reached Italy, in Italian, [on 26 March 2025](https://www.italiaoggi.it/marketing-e-media/media/google-ai-overview-arriva-in-italia-alle-ricerche-risponde-anche-lintelligenza-artificiale-ygfrvsvf). Since then many companies see an odd pattern in Search Console: impressions hold steady or grow, while clicks drop. In 2026 the most solid studies so far on this effect were published, including the first controlled experiment. Here is what they measure, why their numbers differ, and what you can do about your own site.

## How many clicks do AI Overviews really take away?

When an AI Overview appears, clicks to websites fall by about 40%, and for the top organic result the estimated drop reaches 58%. These are the two most quoted figures of 2026, and they come from different methods:

| Study | Method | Main finding |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Agarwal and Sen (ISB and Carnegie Mellon), 2026 | Randomized experiment with 1,065 desktop Chrome users in the US | Outbound organic clicks -38% when an AI Overview appears |
| Ahrefs, February 2026 | 300,000 keywords, desktop Search Console data, December 2023 vs December 2025 | Estimated position 1 CTR -58% |
| Seer Interactive, April 2026 | 53 brands, 5.5 million queries, January 2025 to February 2026 | Organic CTR 2.36% with an AI Overview vs 3.82% without (February 2026) |

The experiment is the cleanest data point. According to [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-overviews-cut-organic-clicks-38-field-study-finds/573145/), a Chrome extension randomly assigned people to three groups: regular Google, Google without AI Overviews, or AI Mode. With the overview removed, clicks per search rose from 0.38 to 0.61 and zero-click searches fell from 72% to 54%. Clicks on paid ads did not change. In the version of the paper revised in June, reported by [PPC Land](https://ppc.land/researchers-find-google-ai-overviews-cut-publisher-clicks-39-8/), the drop is 39.8%.

## Why the studies give different numbers

The numbers differ because each study measures something different: an experiment measures cause, the others measure correlation over a long period. Ahrefs says so explicitly: the 58% is an estimate, built by comparing keywords that trigger an AI Overview with a group of informational keywords that do not. It covers desktop only and position 1 only; further down, the estimated drop goes from 51% at position 2 to 19% at position 10.

How often AI Overviews show up also depends on what people search for. In the experiment they appeared on 42% of people's real searches. A [Washington University in St. Louis study](https://arxiv.org/html/2605.14021) of 55,393 trending searches, run in March and April 2026, found them on only 13.7%. Among queries phrased as questions, though, the rate jumps to 64.7%, against 9.5% for the rest.

The practical takeaway: the most exposed pages are the ones answering informational questions ("how to", "how much does it cost", "what is the difference"). Searches that are not questions, such as a brand name, show far fewer of them.

## Does being cited in the AI Overview change the math?

Yes: brands cited in the overview lose far fewer clicks than brands left out. This is the most useful finding of the [Seer Interactive](https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update) study. On informational queries in 2025, per one million organic impressions:

- with no AI Overview, about 33,500 clicks;
- with an AI Overview citing the brand, about 20,700;
- with an AI Overview not citing the brand, about 9,400.

Being cited is worth more than twice the clicks of not being cited, but it still falls short of a page with no overview at all. For brands that were not cited, organic CTR on AI Overview queries dropped 67% over 2025, from 1.65% to 0.55%.

One more detail explains many Search Console charts: between September and October 2025, cited brands saw impressions more than double while clicks stayed almost flat. CTR collapsed because of the denominator, not because of lost clicks. Before you panic over a falling CTR, look at absolute clicks.

## What Google says and what is still open

Google maintains that total organic click volume to websites is stable. Liz Reid, head of Search, wrote in an [August 2025 post](https://blog.google/products/search/ai-search-driving-more-queries-higher-quality-clicks/) that overall volume was "relatively stable" year over year, with more "quality clicks", meaning visits where people do not quickly click back. The post gives no figures.

The two positions are not entirely at odds. Google talks about total clicks, which can hold up because people search more; the studies measure clicks per search on queries where an overview appears. For a site that lives on informational content, the second number is the one that matters.

Some limits are worth keeping in mind:

- the Agarwal and Sen paper is a draft that has not yet been peer reviewed;
- all the studies cited use US data, where AI Overviews have been live longer;
- in the experiment, people's satisfaction was almost identical with and without the overview: searchers do not miss the clicks, so do not expect traffic to come back on its own.

## What to do with your site

Your first move is to measure where you lose clicks; your second is to work on becoming one of the cited sources. In practice:

1. **Split your queries in Search Console.** Filter the ones phrased as questions and compare clicks, not just CTR, with the same period last year. If you lose there and hold steady on brand queries, the AI Overviews effect is likely.
2. **Measure traffic coming from AI assistants.** Part of the clicks lost on Google moves to ChatGPT, Gemini and similar tools: here is [how to see it in Google Analytics 4](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/traffico-da-chatgpt-come-misurarlo-google-analytics-4).
3. **Write pages that can be cited.** A direct answer in the first sentence, data with a source, one topic per page. The Washington University study found that 29.8% of the domains cited in AI Overviews were not among the first-page results for the same search: you do not need to rank first to be cited.
4. **Track citations, not just rankings.** The same applies to other AI answers: Geosnap measures whether your brand is cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode, and the Google Search Console integration lets you put those citations next to your clicks. For how AI Mode picks its sources, see our [dedicated article](https://geosnap.ai/en/blog/google-ai-mode-fonti-come-farsi-citare).

An example: a gardening e-commerce store with a guide on "when to prune hydrangeas" will probably lose clicks on that query, cited or not. It can still aim to be the cited source and let the rest of the site work on searches closer to a purchase, which are rarely phrased as questions.

## Sources

- [Study Confirms Google AI Overviews Cut Organic Clicks 38%](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-overviews-cut-organic-clicks-38-field-study-finds/573145/) (Search Engine Journal, 2026-04-27)
- [Researchers find Google AI Overviews cut publisher clicks 39.8%](https://ppc.land/researchers-find-google-ai-overviews-cut-publisher-clicks-39-8/) (PPC Land, 2026-07-01)
- [Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update) (Ahrefs, 2026-02-04)
- [AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update](https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update) (Seer Interactive, 2026-04-24)
- [Measuring Google AI Overviews: Activation, Source Quality, Claim Fidelity, and Publisher Impact](https://arxiv.org/html/2605.14021) (Washington University in St. Louis (arXiv), 2026-05-13)
- [AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks](https://blog.google/products/search/ai-search-driving-more-queries-higher-quality-clicks/) (Google, 2025-08-06)
- [Google AI Overview arriva in Italia](https://www.italiaoggi.it/marketing-e-media/media/google-ai-overview-arriva-in-italia-alle-ricerche-risponde-anche-lintelligenza-artificiale-ygfrvsvf) (ItaliaOggi, 2025-03-26)

## Frequently asked questions

### Do AI Overviews really reduce traffic to websites?

On the individual searches where they appear, yes: the Agarwal and Sen experiment measures -38% outbound organic clicks and Ahrefs estimates -58% for the top result. Google says total click volume is stable, but that refers to the total, not to each search.

### Which searches trigger AI Overviews most often?

Informational questions. In a Washington University study of 55,393 trending searches, they appeared on 64.7% of queries phrased as questions and on 9.5% of the rest. Searches that are not questions, such as a brand name, are much less exposed.

### Does being cited in an AI Overview bring clicks?

Yes, more than twice as many as not being cited: according to Seer Interactive, about 20,700 versus 9,400 clicks per million impressions on informational queries. It is still a drop compared with searches without an overview, which got about 33,500.

### Do these figures apply outside the US?

The studies cited use US data. AI Overviews have since rolled out to many more countries, including Italy in March 2025, so the direction is likely the same, but check the size of the drop against your own Search Console data.

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AI Overviews and clicks: how much traffic do you lose? What 2026 studies say 76 characters

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AI Overviews and lost clicks: an experiment measures -38%, Ahrefs -58% for the top result. Why the numbers differ and how much being cited matters. 147 characters

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