If you’ve noticed a sudden drop in clicks—even when ranking #1—you’re not imagining things. Ahrefs just ran a deep dive on 300,000 keywords and found something pretty wild:

👉 When an AI Overview shows up in the search results, the click-through rate (CTR) for the top-ranking page drops by 34.5%.

Let that sink in.

Their data compares search performance before and after Google rolled out AI Overviews in the U.S. Here’s what they saw:

In 2024 (pre-AI Overviews), position 1 had a CTR of 0.073

In 2025 (post-rollout), it dropped to 0.026

That’s not just a dip—it’s a nosedive.

📉 Why? Because AI Overviews often answer the user’s question right there on the page. No click needed. It’s like featured snippets, but more aggressive. And while Google claims links inside these Overviews get more clicks… we have no way to verify that. Google doesn’t separate those clicks in Search Console.

The bottom line? If AI Overviews stay the same, this 34.5% drop could just be the beginning.

This might be the moment SEO folks rethink how they win attention—not just rankings.

📊 Full breakdown via Ahrefs: ahrefs.com/blog/ai-o…