A question I get from almost every client right now is: “How much traffic are AI Overviews going to take from us?” Most people expect a single number, like “30%.” In reality there is no single number. The loss depends on which keywords you rank for, where you rank and what kind of question the searcher is asking.
That is actually good news. It means you can estimate the risk keyword by keyword, before the drop shows up in your reports. You can then decide which pages to protect, which to change and which to stop worrying about.
In this guide, let me explain what the best click studies say, why the impact varies so much, and then give you a simple spreadsheet method to forecast click loss and revenue impact for your own keywords. If your traffic has already dropped and you want to know why, read my companion piece on telling ranking loss apart from AI Overview CTR loss instead. This article is about looking ahead.
What the click studies say about AI Overviews
Several independent studies now point the same way, even though they use different methods. Here is a short summary of the ones I trust most.
| Study (date of data) | Method | Main finding |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs update (Dec 2023 vs Dec 2025) | 300,000 keywords, aggregated Search Console data | Position 1 CTR about 58% lower on keywords with AI Overviews than forecast without them |
| Ahrefs original study (published April 2025) | Same approach, one-year gap | About 34.5% lower CTR for the top result |
| Seer Interactive (June 2024 to Sept 2025) | 3,119 informational queries across 42 organizations | Organic CTR with AI Overviews fell 61% (1.76% to 0.61%); without them it fell 41% |
| Pew Research Center (March 2025) | Browsing data from 900 US adults, 68,879 searches | Users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary vs 15% without |
Two things stand out to me. First, the effect grew between the first and second Ahrefs studies. Second, clicks are falling even on keywords without AI Overviews, which tells you some of the drop is a wider shift in how people search.
Seer’s summary is short and fair:
“AIOs dramatically impact CTRs, and citation matters.”
— Seer Interactive, AIO Impact on Google CTR: September 2025 Update
Google’s own position is different. In August 2025, Liz Reid, Head of Google Search, wrote that total organic click volume had been “relatively stable year-over-year” and that click quality had improved. Both can be true at once: total clicks across the web may hold steady while clicks to your informational page fall. That is why a keyword-level estimate is more useful than any average.
Why the click loss varies so much by query type
An AI Overview can only take clicks where it appears. So your first question is not “how much do AI Overviews take?” but “how often do they show for my keywords?” Ahrefs studied 146 million desktop results pages from September 2025 and found that AI Overviews appeared on 20.5% of them. The rate changes a lot by query type:
| Query type | Share with an AI Overview |
|---|---|
| Question queries | 57.9% |
| Queries of 7+ words | 46.4% |
| Medical YMYL queries | 44.1% |
| Informational intent | 21.4% |
| Branded queries | 13.1% |
| One-word queries | 9.5% |
| Commercial intent | 4.3% |
| Transactional intent | 2.1% |
| Navigational intent | 0.9% |
Pew saw the same pattern from the user side: summaries appeared on 60% of searches using question words, but only 8% of one- or two-word searches. In plain words, long questions are exposed, short buying searches mostly aren’t. I go deeper into this in my guide on which queries trigger AI Overviews.
Position matters too. The Ahrefs update measured how much CTR fell at each ranking position:
| Position | CTR reduction with AI Overview | Position | CTR reduction with AI Overview |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | -58.0% | 6 | -30.5% |
| 2 | -50.8% | 7 | -29.7% |
| 3 | -46.4% | 8 | -28.8% |
| 4 | -38.8% | 9 | -29.7% |
| 5 | -32.6% | 10 | -19.4% |
The top positions lose the most, partly because they had the most clicks to lose. If you rank first for a lot of long, question-style keywords, you carry the highest risk.
Finding the keywords that show AI Overviews
Here is the frustrating part. Google Search Console does not tell you which of your queries showed an AI Overview. Google’s Search Central guidance says AI feature traffic is included in your overall search data under the “Web” search type, with no separate filter. I explain what you can and can’t see in my article on AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console.
So you need to find the exposed keywords another way. Here is how I would do it:
- Export your top queries from the Search Console Performance report for the last three months: query, clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. My guide to the Search Console Performance report walks through the export.
- Keep the queries that matter. For most sites, the top 200–500 queries by clicks cover most of the traffic.
- Check AI Overview presence with a rank tracker. Most major SEO tools now flag whether an AI Overview appears for a tracked keyword. Mark each query “AIO: yes” or “AIO: no.”
- Spot-check by hand. Search 20 of your most valuable queries in a private window. AI Overviews can come and go, so note the date.
- For queries you can’t check, use the trigger rates in the table above as a probability. For example, a question query gets a 58% chance, a transactional query a 2% chance.
Building a click-loss estimate, keyword by keyword
Now the math. You don’t need anything fancy. One formula per row in a spreadsheet:
Expected monthly click loss = Current monthly clicks × AIO probability × CTR reduction at your positionWhere:
- Current monthly clicks comes from Search Console.
- AIO probability is 1 if you saw an AI Overview, 0 if you checked and didn’t, or the trigger rate for that query type if you couldn’t check.
- CTR reduction comes from the position table above. Round your average position to the nearest whole number.
One important caution. If a keyword already shows an AI Overview, some of that loss may already be in your current clicks. In that case, the formula estimates the remaining risk only if AI Overviews were added recently. For older ones, treat the result as an upper limit. I treat all of this as direction, not hard science.
Worked example: a hypothetical accounting firm
Let me show you with made-up numbers for a small accounting firm’s blog and service pages.
| Keyword (example) | Monthly clicks | Position | AIO probability | CTR reduction | Expected click loss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| how to file self-employed taxes | 900 | 1 | 1.0 (seen) | 58.0% | 522 |
| what expenses can a freelancer deduct | 600 | 3 | 1.0 (seen) | 46.4% | 278 |
| quarterly estimated tax deadlines | 400 | 2 | 0.579 (question rate) | 50.8% | 118 |
| small business accountant chicago | 250 | 4 | 0 (checked) | 38.8% | 0 |
| bookkeeping services pricing | 150 | 5 | 0.043 (commercial rate) | 32.6% | 2 |
| Total | 2,300 | 920 |
In this example, the firm could lose about 920 of 2,300 monthly clicks, or 40%. But notice where the loss sits: almost entirely in the informational blog posts. The service and pricing keywords are barely touched.
Weighting the forecast by what each click is worth
Clicks are not equal. A click on “how to file self-employed taxes” is worth far less to an accounting firm than a click on “small business accountant chicago.” So the next step is to add value per click.
Value per click = Conversion rate × Average value of a conversion
Expected value lost = Expected click loss × Value per clickContinuing the hypothetical example:
- Blog posts convert at 0.3% into consultations, each worth $400 on average. Value per click: $1.20.
- Service pages convert at 4%, same $400 value. Value per click: $16.
The blog posts lose about 918 clicks × $1.20 = about $1,100 a month. The service page keywords lose 2 clicks × $16 = about $32 a month. Even though the blog loses 40% of traffic, the business impact is much smaller than the traffic chart suggests. This is the number I would bring to a budget meeting, not the 40%.
If you don’t track conversions per landing page yet, fix that first. Without it, every forecast is a guess.
Forecasting traffic and revenue under three scenarios
A single forecast hides uncertainty. I suggest building three versions:
- Low impact: use the original 34.5% reduction for position 1 and scale the other positions down by the same ratio. This assumes the effect stays near early-2025 levels.
- Middle: use the Ahrefs December 2025 position table as shown above.
- High impact: use the middle table, and set the AIO probability to 1 for every question or 7+ word query, assuming coverage keeps growing.
Then show all three side by side, for example as monthly clicks and monthly value over the next 12 months. If even the high-impact case is affordable, you can relax a little. If the middle case already hurts, it is time to act.
For keywords where your exposure is high, it also helps to look for related searches where people still need to click, such as tools, calculators, local intent or fresh data. My guide to finding AI-proof keywords covers that search method.
Does being cited inside the AI Overview soften the loss?
Partly. Seer’s Q3 2025 data showed organic CTR of 0.70% when a brand was cited in the AI Overview, versus 0.52% when it wasn’t, about 35% higher. That sounds like a strong reason to aim for citations, and it is. But two cautions.
- Seer itself says it can’t prove citation causes the higher CTR. Strong brands may simply be cited more and clicked more.
- Pew found users clicked a link inside the AI summary in only 1% of visits. A citation helps, but it does not bring back the old click rate.
Pew’s headline finding is worth reading in its own words:
“Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one.”
— Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results
So in your forecast, I would add a column for “cited: yes/no” and, for cited keywords, reduce the expected loss modestly, not cancel it. To improve your chances of being cited, follow my guide on getting your content cited in AI Overviews. And remember AI Mode works differently from AI Overviews, which I compare in AI Mode vs AI Overviews. In the Ahrefs comparison of the two, AI Overviews had no citations at all in 11% of responses, compared with 3% for AI Mode.
Turning the forecast into page-by-page decisions
Once each keyword has an expected value lost, sort the sheet from highest to lowest and group pages into three simple buckets:
- High value at risk: pages where the expected monthly value lost is large. Work on citation, add things an AI summary can’t replace (calculators, templates, original data, local detail) and strengthen the internal links to your service pages.
- High traffic, low value at risk: pages that will lose many clicks but few leads. Don’t panic. Keep them accurate, and measure them on visibility and assisted conversions.
- Low exposure: commercial and local pages with little AI Overview presence. These are where extra investment is safest right now.
This sorting step is what turns a worrying number into a work plan your team can actually follow.
Re-checking your AI Overview estimates every quarter
Your forecast is a snapshot. AI Overviews appear on new queries, disappear from others and change their sources often. Here is the quarterly routine I recommend:
- Re-check AI Overview presence for your top keywords and update the probability column.
- Compare forecast vs actual clicks for each keyword group. If reality is worse than your middle case, move to the high case.
- Update the CTR reduction table when a new reputable study comes out, and note the date of its data.
- Update value per click using the latest conversion data.
- Check citation status for your most valuable exposed keywords.
Keep each quarter’s version. After a year, you will have your own evidence of how AI Overviews affect your site, which is worth more than any industry study. It is also useful context when you compare Google with other channels, as I do in ChatGPT vs Google: search volume vs the traffic they send.
Questions about forecasting AI Overview click loss
How much traffic do AI Overviews take on average?
There is no single average that applies to your site. Ahrefs measured about a 58% lower CTR for the top result on affected keywords (December 2025 data), and Seer measured a 61% drop for informational queries with AI Overviews. Your loss depends on how many of your keywords show one.
Can I see AI Overview clicks in Search Console?
Not separately. Google includes AI feature traffic in overall Web search data, so you need a rank tracker or manual checks to know which queries show an AI Overview.
Which keywords are safest?
Short, commercial, transactional and navigational searches. Ahrefs found AI Overviews on only 4.3% of commercial and 2.1% of transactional queries in its September 2025 data.
Does ranking lower protect me from the loss?
Lower positions lose a smaller share of CTR, but they had fewer clicks to begin with. Ranking lower is never a strategy. Better positions still earn more clicks overall.
Should I stop writing informational content?
No, but be clear about its job. Informational pages now earn fewer clicks, so judge them on citations, brand exposure and assisted conversions as well as traffic.
Running your first AI Overview click-loss forecast this week
Here is the short version. Export your top queries from Search Console. Mark which ones show AI Overviews. Apply the formula, add value per click and build three scenarios. It takes an afternoon, and it turns a scary headline into a number you can plan around.
If you want help building the forecast, or deciding what to do with the pages at risk, our SEO team can work through it with you. Get in touch for a free quote and tell me which keywords you are most worried about.
Further reading on AI Overviews click loss
- AI Referral Traffic Benchmarks: How Fast It's Growing and What's Normal
- Proving AI Search Impact With Holdout and Pre/Post Tests
- AI Mode vs AI Overviews: Same Answers or Different Games?
Sources for this AI Overviews click-loss guide
- Ahrefs: Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%
- Ahrefs: What Triggers AI Overviews?
- Seer Interactive: AIO Impact on Google CTR, September 2025 Update
- Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website
- Google: AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks
- Ahrefs: Are AI Mode and AI Overviews Just Different Versions of the Same Answer?
