B
Evidence Grade B
Graded
accuracy verified by the review judge
Safe to Cite
Current
58%
58% -- click decline rate for Top-ranked pages on AI Overview queries (2026)
In 2026 research by Ahrefs, the top-ranked page on a query with an AI Overview received 58% fewer clicks than an equivalent top-ranked page on a query without an AI Overview.
- Compared against equivalent pages on queries without an AI Overview
Attribution:
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Lighthouse Research Team
Last verified:
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Source verified
Evidence graded
Value
58%
Unit
Percentage
Data Vintage
2026
Entity
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
95
Source Trust
60
Citation Chain
20
Independence
30
Methodology
45
Freshness
95
Source
Ahrefs
Primary
Tier A
https://seohandbook.co.uk/seo-news-updates/ai-overviews-ctr-impact-data/ ↗
Source Article
AI Overviews | The SEO Handbook
AI Overviews
Last updated
AI Overviews are Google’s generative AI answers, shown at the top of search results for an expanding range of queries. They summarise information from across the web and surface it directly in the SERP, with citations, before the user sees a single organic result. As of May…
Original Research
Ahrefs
· Original study ↗
Methodology
Ahrefs research comparing top-ranked pages on queries with vs without AI Overviews
Methodology documented
Segmentation
Industrymarketing
Cite this stat
Plain Text
Top-ranked pages on AI Overview queries: 58% click decline rate. Source: Ahrefs (2026). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/top-result-clicks-ai-overview-ahrefs
HTML Embed
<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/top-result-clicks-ai-overview-ahrefs" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>58%</strong> -- click decline rate for Top-ranked pages on AI Overview queries<br><small>Source: Ahrefs (2026) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/top-result-clicks-ai-overview-ahrefs" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>
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