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Claim File First published 27 July 2026 Last reviewed 27 July 2026

How much traffic are AI Overviews actually costing publishers?

The answer

AI Overviews have reduced organic click-through rates by 58% on average, with some publishers seeing traffic drops of 70% or more. The evidence is overwhelming: the feature systematically replaces clicks with summaries.

Verdict: confirmed traffic killer Confidence: high

The claim

When Google launched AI Overviews in May 2024, the company framed it as a way to help users find information faster. Publishers and SEOs worried it would cannibalize clicks. Two years later, the data is in: the worry was justified.

Study after study shows AI Overviews reduce click-through rates. The question is no longer whether they hurt traffic, but how much, and what a founder can do about it.

The receipts

The evidence spans multiple independent studies, all pointing in the same direction. The earliest signals came from press coverage in May 2024, but the hard numbers arrived over the following year.

58

The average percentage reduction in organic click-through rate caused by Google AI Overviews, per Ahrefs' February 2026 study of millions of queries.

That number has climbed steadily. In April 2025, Ahrefs measured a 34.5% drop. By November 2025, Search Engine Land found 61%. The February 2026 update settled at 58% across a broader sample.

Other studies tell the same story. A July 2025 Press Gazette report found publishers losing 50% of clickthroughs. Digiday reported a 25% referral traffic drop in August 2025. A July 2026 controlled study found a 39.8% reduction. The range is wide, but the direction is not.

What this means for you

If your content gets cited in AI Overviews, you are likely seeing fewer clicks per impression than you would from a traditional search result. The fix is not to avoid being cited. It is to make your citation irresistible enough that users click anyway.

  1. Audit your citation-to-click ratio. Use Google Search Console to compare your click-through rate for queries where AI Overviews appear versus those where they do not. If the gap is wider than 40%, your content is being consumed in the summary, not on your site.
  2. Rewrite your cited passages to demand a click. AI Overviews pull from your page, but they cannot pull interactive elements, proprietary data behind a signup, or a conclusion that requires scrolling. Structure your key insights so the summary is incomplete without the visit.
  3. Track your brand mentions in AI Overviews. Use a tool like ZipTie, Otterly, or Am I Cited to see which queries trigger your content in AI Overviews. If you are cited but not getting clicks, your snippet is too complete. If you are not cited at all, your content structure is wrong.

Confidence, and what would change our mind

Confidence is high because the data is consistent across multiple methodologies and publishers. Every major study since April 2025 has found a CTR decline of 34% to 61%, with the most recent and largest studies converging around 58%.

What would change our mind: Google releasing official, granular click data that shows a smaller decline. Or a major redesign of AI Overviews that drives clicks back up. Neither seems likely.

Sources