AI Overview CTR Dropped 61%. The Data Says Otherwise

A number is making waves in the SEO community: CTR for brand-cited pages in AI Overviews dropped 61% during Q4 2025. The data comes from Seer Interactive, who analyzed 5.47 million queries across 53 brands. At first glance, it looks like the kind of statistic that makes you question your entire organic strategy.

A recent article on Search Engine Journal puts this figure into context. And context changes everything. Because a 61% CTR decline does not necessarily mean a 61% traffic decline. The difference lies in how Google changed the rules without telling anyone.

Let’s look at what the data actually says, not just the headlines.

From 2.52% to 0.76%: the month-by-month breakdown

In September 2025, brand-cited pages in AI Overviews had 15.8 million impressions and a CTR of 2.52%. About 400,000 clicks. By October, impressions exploded to 33.1 million, nearly doubling from the previous month. Clicks? They barely moved, staying around 400,000. CTR dropped to 1.21%.

November brought a sharper shift: impressions continued climbing to 39.5 million, but clicks declined to 301,783. CTR hit 0.76%.

Mathematically, the 61% decline is correct. But what actually happened matters more than the percentage: Google massively expanded where AI Overviews appear. More pages were cited, across more queries, on more types of search intents. The denominator grew far faster than the numerator. Google opened the impression floodgates without a matching increase in click demand.

What makes the data truly interesting is the difference between October and November. In October, clicks held steady. People were still clicking through even when they saw an AI Overview. By November, clicks started declining. This suggests users became accustomed to the format and began consuming the AI-generated answer directly from the SERP, without visiting the source.

Seer Interactive acknowledges a key limitation: they cannot determine whether October’s impression surge happened because Google started showing AI Overviews on more queries where brands were already cited, or because brands earned new citations through SEO efforts. That distinction matters enormously when interpreting the data and making budget decisions.

Cited vs. uncited: the gap is 2x

The study highlights a detail that matters more than the headline: brand-cited pages in AI Overviews receive 120% more clicks per impression than uncited pages on the same AI Overview SERPs. If you are mentioned in an AI Overview, your position is considerably stronger than if you are not. This is a 2x difference, not a marginal one.

There is an important caveat: even cited pages get 38% fewer clicks than they would on a SERP without AI Overviews. Google provides the answer directly on the page, and some users simply do not click through. That is a structural reality that will not reverse. The question is not whether you lose clicks compared to a world without AI Overviews, but whether you are among the brands capturing what remains.

The encouraging trend: organic CTR on AI Overview SERPs has been climbing, from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026. Users are learning to interact with this format, and as data on quality content and AI Search confirms, behavior stabilizes as the format becomes familiar.

What other studies confirm

Seer Interactive is not the only source tracking these shifts. An Ahrefs study across 146 million search results found that AI Overviews trigger on 20.5% of queries. SISTRIX, analyzing the German market, reports a 59% CTR drop at position one on AI Overview SERPs. And Pew Research found that users click through 8% of the time when an AI Overview is present, compared to 15% without one.

All studies converge on the same conclusion: AI Overviews redistribute attention rather than eliminate it. Clicks have not disappeared. They have moved. Some go to cited brands, some are absorbed by the AI answer, and some migrate to other channels entirely. The right question is not “how many clicks am I losing” but “where are clicks going now and how do I make sure I am there.”

For the Romanian market specifically, Google has activated AI Overviews in Romanian, and user behavior follows the same patterns seen in larger markets. Brands that optimize their content now for AI citation will have a significant advantage when AI Overview volume increases on local queries. The window to build that advantage is open now, not after the shift has already happened.

What you should do with this data

If you are reviewing Q4 2025 performance and see CTR declining, do not draw conclusions before checking impressions alongside it. A lower CTR with doubled impressions can mean more visibility, not less traffic. Seer Interactive explicitly recommends analyzing impressions alongside CTR, because isolated numbers are misleading.

Prioritize presence in AI Overviews. The data is unambiguous: being cited means twice the clicks per impression. Your GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) strategy is no longer a nice-to-have. It is an acquisition channel that needs measurement and optimization, and the reasons why GEO is no longer optional are now backed by concrete data.

In practice, this means content that directly answers specific questions, short structured paragraphs that AI models can process and cite, and consistent presence on topics where your brand has authority. This is not about technical tricks. It is about being the source that AI chooses to reference. And that starts with understanding exactly how AI Overviews select and surface citations from the web.

Track AI Overview impressions in Google Search Console as a complementary KPI, not a replacement for traditional CTR. Build separate dashboards for traditional organic, AI Overview citations, and social traffic. Each channel has different benchmarks, and mixing them produces numbers that mislead more than they inform.

And remember that three web realities coexist: traditional SEO, AI Overviews, and social media are complementary channels. CTR data must be read separately for each. A brand that ranks first organically, gets cited in AI Overviews, and has strong social presence captures attention across all three layers.

61% sounds dramatic. The underlying data says search is transforming, not disappearing. And brands that understand the mechanism have a clear advantage over those that only read headlines.