A GrowthSRC study of 200,000+ keywords found that position one organic CTR dropped from 28% to 19%, a 32% decline, between 2024 and 2025 as AI Overviews expanded from covering 10,000 keywords to over 172,000 in the same dataset. Seer Interactive’s analysis of 25.1 million organic impressions across 42 client organizations measured a 61% CTR decline for informational queries where AI Overviews appeared. These are not minor fluctuations. The AI Overview panel fundamentally restructures which users reach organic results and what those users seek when they do. The mechanism involves three distinct effects operating simultaneously: visual displacement, intent satisfaction, and click pathway diversion. Separating these effects matters because each one demands a different strategic response.
Visual displacement pushes organic results below the fold, reducing passive click-through
AI Overview panels occupy substantial vertical SERP space. Advanced Web Ranking data shows that panels average approximately 169 words and include about seven links when expanded. Once expanded, the first traditional organic result appears roughly 1,674 pixels down the page. On most mobile devices with viewport heights of 700-850 pixels, and on many desktop configurations, this pushes position one entirely below the fold.
The displacement effect operates through a simple visibility mechanism. Users who previously saw position one without scrolling now see only the AI Overview. A portion of these users, particularly those on mobile where scrolling friction is higher, never reach organic results. This is pure mechanical suppression: the user’s intent has not been satisfied, but the additional scroll action required to reach organic listings creates enough friction to reduce clicks.
The displacement effect is not uniform across panel types. Collapsed AI Overviews that show a brief summary with a “Show more” button occupy less space, approximately 150-200 pixels, and push position one down modestly. Expanded panels with multiple source citations and detailed answers occupy 300-500+ pixels and can push position one past the second viewport on mobile. The CTR suppression from displacement alone scales roughly linearly with panel height.
Device type amplifies the displacement gap. On desktop, where viewports are taller and scrolling is lower-friction, the displacement effect accounts for a smaller share of total CTR loss. On mobile, where the viewport is constrained and thumb-scrolling introduces friction, displacement is the dominant mechanism for positions one through three. Positions four through ten, already below the fold in most non-AI-Overview SERPs, experience relatively less additional displacement impact because users reaching those positions were already committed scrollers.
Intent satisfaction within the AI Overview reduces click motivation for informational queries
When the AI Overview directly answers the user’s question, a segment of users who would have clicked position one no longer need to visit any external page. This intent satisfaction effect is distinct from displacement because it suppresses clicks even among users who do see the organic results below the panel.
Seer Interactive’s data reveals the scale: organic CTR for informational queries with AI Overviews fell to 0.61%, compared to 1.62% for queries without AI Overviews. The satisfaction effect disproportionately impacts informational queries where the answer fits within a paragraph or a short list. Queries like “what is a 301 redirect” or “how to check robots.txt” can be fully answered within the AI Overview, eliminating the need for a click.
Commercial investigation queries show a different pattern. Users searching “best project management software 2025” may read the AI Overview’s summary but still need to visit individual product pages for pricing, feature comparisons, and reviews. The satisfaction effect is weaker here because the AI Overview provides a starting point rather than a complete answer. Navigational queries, where the user seeks a specific website, show the smallest satisfaction effect because the AI Overview cannot substitute for the destination itself.
The satisfaction effect creates a selection bias in the users who do reach organic results. Pre-AI-Overview, position one received clicks from a broad spectrum of users including those with shallow informational needs. Post-AI-Overview, users who scroll past the panel tend to have deeper, more complex intent that the panel did not satisfy. This means that while CTR drops, the users who do click may exhibit higher engagement metrics on the destination page, including longer time on page and lower bounce rates.
CTR redistribution is not uniform, as positions two and three can gain relative share when position one loses
The AI Overview does not suppress all organic clicks equally. GrowthSRC’s study found that while position one CTR dropped 32% and position two dropped 39%, positions six through ten actually increased their CTR by 30.63% in 2025 compared to 2024. This redistribution pattern contradicts the assumption that AI Overviews uniformly suppress all organic clicks.
The mechanism behind this redistribution involves deliberate evaluation behavior. Users who scroll past an AI Overview are making a conscious decision that the panel’s answer was insufficient. These users enter the organic results in a more evaluative mindset than pre-AI-Overview searchers. Rather than reflexively clicking position one, they scan multiple results and evaluate titles and descriptions more carefully.
Position one absorbs the largest absolute CTR loss because it previously benefited most from reflexive clicking, the pattern where users click the first result without evaluating alternatives. The AI Overview intercepts this reflexive behavior. Positions two and three experience mixed effects: they lose some traffic from overall reduced clicks but gain relative share from users who engage in deliberate evaluation. The net effect varies by query type.
Lower positions (six through ten) benefit from a different mechanism. Users who scroll deep enough to see these results represent the most intent-driven segment of searchers. The AI Overview has filtered out casual searchers and those with simple informational needs. The remaining searchers are more likely to evaluate all visible results, giving lower positions exposure they did not previously receive from the same user population.
Advanced Web Ranking data shows this effect varies by industry. News queries saw positions one through three gain CTR even with AI Overviews present, likely because AI-generated answers cannot substitute for breaking news coverage. Science queries showed the opposite pattern, with declining CTR across all positions as AI Overviews more completely satisfied the informational intent.
Expanded AI Overviews with visible source citations create a new click pathway that bypasses organic results entirely
When AI Overviews include clickable source citations, a portion of clicks that would have gone to organic positions instead flow through the AI Overview citation links. seoClarity’s analysis of 432,000 keywords found that 97% of AI Overviews cite at least one source from the top 20 organic results, with an average of five URLs per panel.
This citation click pathway creates a parallel traffic channel. A page ranking position one organically might also appear as a cited source within the AI Overview. Clicks on that citation link arrive at the same page but through a different SERP mechanism. In Google Search Console, both click types register as organic clicks, making it impossible to separate citation-driven traffic from traditional organic traffic without additional instrumentation.
The citation pathway does not mirror organic ranking order. seoClarity found that only 12% of AI Overviews link directly to the position one page. Nearly 80% of panels contain links to at least one top-three result, but the specific pages cited depend on the content’s relevance to the AI-generated answer rather than traditional ranking signals. A position three page with more directly quotable content may receive an AI Overview citation while position one does not.
Seer Interactive’s data adds a critical finding: brands cited within AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks compared to uncited brands. This citation amplification effect suggests that appearing in the AI Overview does not merely divert clicks, it generates additional visibility that benefits the cited brand across all SERP touchpoints. The traffic is not purely zero-sum between the AI Overview and organic results.
Traffic arriving through AI Overview citations behaves differently from traditional organic traffic in engagement metrics. Users who click a citation have already read the AI Overview’s contextual framing of that source, arriving with a primed understanding of what the page contains. Early observational data from Seer Interactive suggests these users have different engagement patterns, though comprehensive benchmarks across industries are still emerging.
The measurement gap: Search Console does not separate AI Overview impressions from organic impressions
Current Google Search Console reporting aggregates impressions and clicks without distinguishing whether the user saw the query result in an AI Overview context or an AI-Overview-free SERP. This measurement gap prevents practitioners from isolating the causal impact of AI Overviews on their specific pages.
A page receiving 10,000 impressions per month may be generating 3,000 of those impressions in SERPs with AI Overviews and 7,000 in SERPs without. If the AI-Overview impressions produce a 0.5% CTR and the non-AI-Overview impressions produce a 3% CTR, the blended CTR of 2.25% obscures the dramatic difference between the two contexts. Without segmentation, practitioners cannot determine whether their CTR changes are driven by AI Overview expansion, ranking shifts, or other SERP feature changes.
The workaround methodology involves combining Search Console data with third-party SERP monitoring tools. Tools like seoClarity, Semrush, and Ahrefs track which queries trigger AI Overviews. By cross-referencing this data with Search Console query-level performance, practitioners can create approximate segments: queries where AI Overviews appear versus queries where they do not. This segmentation reveals which portion of a page’s performance is operating under AI Overview suppression.
A second measurement limitation involves the Rank Fuse finding that the ratio of organic CTR with AI Overviews to CTR without AI Overviews decreased from 0.53 in January 2024 to 0.16 in January 2025. This accelerating suppression means that historical CTR benchmarks are obsolete. A page maintaining position one for a stable query may see CTR decline 60%+ not because of any ranking change but because Google expanded AI Overviews to cover that query category. Without AI Overview presence data in Search Console, this decline appears identical to a ranking problem.
Practitioners should track AI Overview presence at the query level using third-party tools and build reporting dashboards that separate “CTR under AI Overview” from “CTR without AI Overview.” This segmentation is the minimum viable measurement framework for understanding actual organic performance in the current SERP environment.
Do lower organic positions (6-10) actually benefit from AI Overview presence on the SERP?
In some cases, yes. GrowthSRC’s study of 200,000+ keywords found that positions six through ten increased their CTR by 30.63% in 2025 compared to 2024. Users who scroll past an AI Overview are making a deliberate decision that the panel was insufficient, entering the organic results in an evaluative mindset. This filters out casual searchers and gives lower positions exposure to more intent-driven users than they previously received.
Can you distinguish AI Overview citation clicks from traditional organic clicks in Search Console?
No. Google Search Console aggregates both click types as organic clicks without distinguishing whether the user arrived through an AI Overview citation link or a traditional organic listing. Separating these traffic sources requires combining Search Console data with third-party SERP monitoring tools that track which queries trigger AI Overviews and which pages appear as cited sources within those panels.
Does being cited within an AI Overview compensate for the organic CTR loss it causes?
Brands cited within AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks compared to uncited brands, according to Seer Interactive’s data. This citation amplification effect suggests that AI Overview presence generates additional visibility benefiting the cited brand across all SERP touchpoints. The traffic dynamic is not purely zero-sum between the AI Overview and organic results, though uncited pages face unmitigated CTR suppression.
Sources
- Seer Interactive: AIO Impact on Google CTR, September 2025 Update — 25.1 million impression study measuring 61% organic CTR decline and citation amplification effects
- Ahrefs: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% (December 2025 Update) — Position-one CTR reduction measurement showing escalating impact from 34.5% to 58%
- GrowthSRC: Google Organic CTR 2025 Study of 200K Keywords — Position-by-position CTR analysis showing 32% decline at position one and 30.63% increase at positions six through ten
- seoClarity: The Overlap Between AI Overviews and Organic Rankings — 432,000-keyword analysis of AI Overview citation patterns and organic ranking overlap
