B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Recent
34.5%
34.5% -- ctr decline percentage for Top-ranking (position #1) organic results on informational keywords when a Google AI Overview is present (2025-03)
Top-ranking search results experienced a 34.5% decline in clickthrough rate when a Google AI Overview was present, comparing actual March 2025 CTR to forecasted CTR.
- Calculated by comparing the actual CTR (0.026) to the forecasted CTR without AI Overviews (0.040) based on normal traffic trends.
- Based on informational keywords from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer database.
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
34.5%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2025-03
Entity
Sample Size
300,000
Geography
Global
Evidence Quality
B
Strong, reliable evidence
Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.
Single source - not yet corroborated
Score breakdown
Extraction
50
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Ahrefs
Primary
Tier C
https://foxandowlmarketing.com/google-ai-overviews-and-click-through-rates/ ↗
Source Article
Google's AI Overviews: What 300,000 Keywords Reveal About Your SEO Clicks
AI Overview: A New Era of Search Results
Google has been steadily introducing AI-generated summaries, or AI Overviews, at the top of many search results. These summaries are meant to quickly answer a user’s question by pulling together snippets of information from multiple sources.
Google CEO Sundar…
Original Research
Ahrefs
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Calculated as actual March 2025 CTR (0.026) vs forecasted CTR without AI Overviews (0.040); comparison period March 2024 to March 2025
Methodology documented
Segmentation
IndustryMedia
RegionGlobal
RoleSEO Specialist
Channelsearch
Cite this stat
Plain Text
Top-ranking (position #1) organic results on informational keywords when a Google AI Overview is present: 34.5% ctr decline percentage. Source: Ahrefs (2025-03). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/ctr-decline-ai-overviews-top-result
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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ctr-decline-ai-overviews-top-result" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>34.5%</strong> -- ctr decline percentage for Top-ranking (position #1) organic results on informational keywords when a Google AI Overview is present<br><small>Source: Ahrefs (2025-03) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/ctr-decline-ai-overviews-top-result" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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