Google Keeps 58 Out of Every 100 Clicks Now
The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI-Ready CMO
Google is stealing your traffic, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Ahrefs ran an updated study on the impact of AI Overviews, and the numbers got worse.
A lot worse.
In April 2025, their research showed AI Overviews reduced clicks to the top-ranking page by 34.5%. Their new data, pulled from December 2025, puts that number at 58%. For every 100 clicks a position-one page used to earn, Google now keeps 58 of them. The lower positions aren’t spared either—position five loses a third of its clicks, and even position ten takes a 19% hit. Other researchers are seeing similar or worse: Seer Interactive reports drops up to 65%, and the Daily Mail claims 80-90% (it’s the Daily Mail so, well, take it with a pinch of salt).
The trend line is pointing one direction, and it’s not yours.
None of this should surprise anyone who’s been paying attention, but the speed of the decline might. The original Ahrefs study predicted exactly this: as novelty wears off and users get comfortable letting Google answer their questions without clicking through, the numbers would get uglier. They did. The “law of shitty clickthroughs” remains undefeated.
The old playbook of “rank high, get traffic” is breaking in real time.
You can hold position one and still watch your CTR crater, because the answer to the user’s question is sitting right there in the AI Overview, wearing your content like a borrowed jacket. Ahrefs calls this “the great decoupling”—your rankings stay stable, your impressions hold, but your clicks evaporate. If you’re reporting to leadership and only showing ranking data, you’re painting a picture that doesn’t match reality.
So what do you actually do? Stop pretending this isn’t happening, for starters. If your content strategy is built entirely around informational, question-based queries—the exact type that triggers AI Overviews 58% of the time—a significant chunk of that traffic is gone and isn’t coming back. That doesn’t mean you abandon those queries. It means you reframe what “winning” looks like.
Visibility in AI Overviews is becoming a brand awareness play, not a traffic play. Being cited is the new ranking. If your brand gets mentioned in the answer, you exist. If it doesn’t, you’re invisible even if you rank in the top 10.
The data also strongly suggests that topical authority matters more than ever. Google’s AI breaks queries into sub-queries (called “fan-out queries”) and pulls from multiple sources across the topic. Pages that rank across these related queries are 161% more likely to get cited.
In plain English: one great article on a topic isn’t enough anymore. You need to own the conversation around it.
Off-site brand mentions—especially on YouTube and authoritative, highly-linked pages—show the strongest correlation with AI Overview visibility. The brands that show up everywhere tend to show up in the AI answer too.
Google is turning search from a referral service into a destination. The traffic you used to earn by being useful is now being absorbed by a system that uses your usefulness and keeps the visitor. You can fight it, ignore it, or adapt to it. Two of those options don’t have a future.
— Torsten and Peter
3 AI Marketing Tools To Try Today
Semrush
Dominate search rankings with AI-powered SEO insights—Semrush analyzes competitors, identifies content gaps, and tracks keyword performance to outrank rivals faster.
SurferSEO
Optimize content for search without guesswork—Surfer SEO analyzes top-ranking pages and gives you exact guidelines to outrank competitors.
Frase
Research and write SEO content that ranks faster—Frase analyzes competitors, generates outlines, and optimizes for search visibility.
Find untapped audiences.
The AI Audience Scout identifies niche communities, subreddits, newsletters, and forums where your ideal customers are already active—with engagement metrics and outreach strategies included.
Stop guessing where your audience hangs out. Enter your market and get ranked communities with audience size, engagement levels, and tactical entry points.
Available for AI-Ready CMO paid subscribers.
Thank you for the insights- what actions or mindset shift do you think brand owners should take?
This is honestly one of the best breakdowns i've seen on this. The "great decoupling" framing is perfect - we've been watching rankings hold steady while traffic drops for clients and couldn't explain it well til now. The shift from traffic to brand mentions as the new metric is gonna change alot of how we report success. Ran into this exact issue last month and your analysis makes way more sense then anything else out there.