Google AI Overviews CTR Shows Early Recovery Signs: Study
▼ Summary
– Google’s AI Overview click-through rate rose from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, an 85% increase.
– Pages cited in AI Overviews get more clicks than uncited pages, but both receive fewer clicks than searches without an AI Overview.
– Searches without AI Overviews saw CTR increase from 2.8% in early 2025 to 3.8% by February 2026.
– AI Overviews appear in approximately 95% of comparison queries, 86% of question queries, 36% of informational queries, and 5% of transactional queries.
– When an AI Overview was shown, paid search CTR rose slightly from 14.6% to 16.2%, but fell from 26% to 21.8% when no AI Overview appeared.
After a steep decline to just 1.3% in December 2025, the click-through rate on Google’s AI Overviews has rebounded to 2.4% as of February 2026. That represents an 85% surge over just two months, based on fresh analysis from Seer Interactive.
What drives click-through rates. When an AI Overview appears, pages that are cited within it see a noticeable boost in clicks compared to other results on the same page that are left out. Yet even cited pages still trail behind searches that have no AI Overview at all. Here is the breakdown from the data:
- No AI Overview: Approximately 3.3% CTRWhere clicks are moving. Searches that do not trigger an AI Overview are becoming more valuable. The CTR on those queries climbed from 2.8% in early 2025 to 3.8% by February 2026. One likely explanation is that AI Overviews handle quick, straightforward answers, meaning the users who still click through are those seeking deeper information.AI Overviews vary by query intent. Their appearance is far from uniform across different search types:
- Informational queries: About 36% show an AI OverviewA caveat. A lower CTR does not automatically signal worse performance. In some cases, clicks remained flat while impressions grew. This pattern suggests that brands may have appeared in more AI Overviews even as their click rates dropped, effectively gaining visibility without proportional traffic.Paid search remains far more stable. When Google displayed an AI Overview, paid search CTR actually rose slightly, from 14.6% to 16.2%. In contrast, when no AI Overview appeared, paid CTR fell from 26% to 21.8%.Why this matters. Google’s AI Overviews are not simply reducing clicks. They are redistributing traffic, channeling more visitors to sites they cite while sharply reducing traffic to those they ignore. The takeaway is clear: brands need to earn placement in AI Overviews while also doubling down on search queries where users are still actively clicking.About the methodology. Seer Interactive analyzed 53 brands, 5.47 million queries, and 2.43 billion impressions spanning January 2025 through February 2026. The full findings are detailed in their report, AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update.
