{ "question": "How much do AI Overviews reduce clicks?", "answer": "Clicks roughly halve. In Pew Research Center's March 2025 browsing data from 900 US adults, people clicked a normal Google result on 8% of visits with an AI Overview, against 15% without one. Ahrefs found a 58% lower desktop click rate for the top-ranking page in December 2025. Links inside the summary got clicks on 1% of visits.", "period": "Mar 2025", "key_numbers": [ { "value": "8%", "label": "US Google visits with an AI summary that led to a click on a normal result, against 15% without", "note": "Pew Research Center, Mar 2025", "stat": "ai-search/google-ai-overview-click-rate" }, { "value": "-58%", "label": "Desktop click rate of the top-ranking page when an AI Overview shows", "note": "Ahrefs, Dec 2025 vs Dec 2023", "stat": "ai-search/ai-overview-top-result-ctr-drop" }, { "value": "1%", "label": "Visits with an AI summary that included a click on a link inside it", "note": "Pew Research Center, Mar 2025", "stat": "ai-search/google-ai-overview-inside-link-clicks" }, { "value": "26%", "label": "Results pages with an AI summary that ended the browsing session, against 16% without", "note": "Pew Research Center, Mar 2025", "stat": "ai-search/google-ai-overview-session-end" }, { "value": "Over 10%", "label": "More Google queries for the types of searches that show AI Overviews", "note": "Alphabet, Q2 2025", "stat": "ai-search/ai-overviews-extra-queries" } ], "tables": [ { "id": "pew-behaviour", "title": "What US Google users did, with and without an AI summary (Mar 2025)", "columns": [ "Behaviour on the Google results page", "With an AI summary", "Without an AI summary" ], "rows": [ [ "Clicked a traditional search result", "8%", "15%" ], [ "Clicked a link inside the AI summary", "1%", "n/a" ], [ "Ended the browsing session", "26%", "16%" ] ], "row_ids": [ "pew-click", "pew-inside", "pew-session-end" ], "note": "Pew Research Center: tracked browsing of 900 US adults, 68,879 Google searches, 1-31 March 2025. Shares of visits to results pages.", "source": "pew" }, { "id": "pew-query-type", "title": "Google searches that produced an AI summary, by type of search (Mar 2025)", "columns": [ "Type of search", "Searches with an AI summary" ], "rows": [ [ "Starting with who, what, when or why", "60%" ], [ "10 words or more", "53%" ], [ "Full sentence (with a noun and a verb)", "36%" ], [ "All searches", "18%" ], [ "One or two words", "8%" ] ], "row_ids": [ "query-question", "query-long", "query-sentence", "query-all", "query-short" ], "note": "Pew re-ran the 68,879 searches on 7-17 April 2025; 12,593 produced an AI summary. Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit made up 15% of the sources cited in summaries and 17% of standard results.", "source": "pew" }, { "id": "ahrefs-studies", "title": "Ahrefs: position 1 desktop click rate, with and without an AI Overview", "columns": [ "Ahrefs study", "Keywords with an AI Overview", "Informational keywords without one", "Forecast for AI Overview keywords without it", "Gap" ], "rows": [ [ "Apr 2025 study: Mar 2024 to Mar 2025", "7.3% to 2.6%", "5.6% to 3.1%", "4.0%", "-34.5%" ], [ "Feb 2026 update: Dec 2023 to Dec 2025", "7.3% to 1.6%", "7.6% to 3.9%", "3.7%", "-58%" ] ], "row_ids": [ "ahrefs-2025", "ahrefs-2026" ], "note": "Vendor studies: 300,000 keywords from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer (150,000 with an AI Overview, 150,000 informational without), desktop click rate from aggregated Google Search Console data. The update spans two years, not one, so -34.5% to -58% is not a clean trend. Ahrefs gives click rates as decimals (0.073); shown here as percent. The -34.5% is Ahrefs' own figure; the rounded rates shown give about -35%.", "source": "ahrefs" }, { "id": "ahrefs-by-position", "title": "Change in desktop click rate when an AI Overview shows, by ranking position (Dec 2025)", "columns": [ "Ranking position", "Change in click rate" ], "rows": [ [ "1", "-58.0%" ], [ "2", "-50.8%" ], [ "3", "-46.4%" ], [ "4", "-38.8%" ], [ "5", "-32.6%" ], [ "6", "-30.5%" ], [ "7", "-29.7%" ], [ "8", "-28.8%" ], [ "9", "-29.7%" ], [ "10", "-19.4%" ] ], "row_ids": [ "pos-1", "pos-2", "pos-3", "pos-4", "pos-5", "pos-6", "pos-7", "pos-8", "pos-9", "pos-10" ], "note": "Ahrefs, February 2026 update, December 2025 against a forecast from December 2023.", "source": "ahrefs" }, { "id": "google-says", "title": "What Google says about AI Overviews and clicks", "columns": [ "Google's statement", "Figure", "When" ], "rows": [ [ "More queries for the types of searches that show AI Overviews, worldwide", "Over 10%", "Q2 2025 (Alphabet earnings remarks, Jul 2025)" ], [ "Total organic click volume from Google Search to websites, year over year", "Relatively stable (no figure given)", "Aug 2025 (Liz Reid, head of Google Search)" ] ], "row_ids": [ "google-extra-queries", "google-click-volume" ], "note": "Company statements, not audited. Google also says average click quality has increased, meaning fewer quick returns to the results page, without publishing numbers.", "source": "google" } ], "sources": [ { "name": "Pew Research Center", "publisher": "Pew Research Center", "type": "survey", "url": "https://www.pewresearch.org/" }, { "name": "AI Overviews click-through studies", "publisher": "Ahrefs", "type": "vendor", "url": "https://ahrefs.com/" }, { "name": "Google and Alphabet official announcements (I/O keynote, earnings call remarks)", "publisher": "Google / Alphabet", "type": "vendor", "url": "https://blog.google/" } ], "content_changed_on": "2026-10-30", "page_url": "https://digitaltreed.com/statistics/ai-search/ai-overviews-click-through-rate", "csv_url": "https://digitaltreed.com/statistics/ai-search/ai-overviews-click-through-rate.csv" }