Are AI Overviews taking your clicks? How to measure it in Search Console

AI Overviews get blamed for a lot of traffic drops, and some of that blame is deserved. But "AI took our clicks" isn't something you can act on, or explain to a boss or client, until you've measured AI Overviews traffic loss on your own site.

Quick answer: Search Console can't hand you an exact count of clicks lost to AI Overviews, but you can estimate it. Use the generative AI performance report to see which pages appear in AI features, then find queries in the Performance report where your position held but CTR fell, and confirm an AI Overview shows for them. Multiply the CTR drop by impressions to estimate the clicks you lost.

#What the research says about AI Overviews and clicks

Two widely cited studies point in the same direction, with different numbers.

Pew Research Center's July 2025 study, as reported by The Register, looked at the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. When a Google search showed an AI summary, users clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits. Without a summary, they did so in 15%. Only about 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the summary itself, and users ended their browsing session 26% of the time after a page with a summary, versus 16% without. Google disputed the study's methodology.

Ahrefs' December 2025 update analyzed 300,000 keywords. For the position 1 result, AI Overview presence correlated with roughly 58% lower average CTR, comparing December 2023 with December 2025. Their April 2025 study had put the figure at 34.5%.

Don't line these numbers up against each other. Pew measured what a sample of people did across their own searches. Ahrefs measured CTR patterns across a large keyword set. Different samples, different methods, different questions. And a correlation isn't proof that the AI Overview caused the whole drop.

The useful takeaway is narrower: on queries where an AI Overview appears, expect fewer clicks at the same position. How many fewer depends on your queries. A quick fact is easy to summarize, while someone who wants to compare, buy, download or book is more likely to still need a click. Only your own data shows where your site falls.

#What Search Console can and can't tell you

Search Console has a generative AI performance report for Search that covers AI Overviews and AI Mode. It became available for all sites worldwide as of August 31, 2026.

It reports impressions, meaning the times a link to your site was shown in a generative AI feature, broken down by page, country, date and device. That answers a useful question: which of your pages show up in AI answers, and is that number growing?

Know its limits before you lean on it:

• It may not appear at all if your site doesn't have enough impressions in AI features.
• The table shows at most 1,000 rows, like the rest of Search Console.
• The newest data can be preliminary, shown as a dotted line on the chart.
• Its breakdowns are page, country, date and device, so it won't tell you which searches triggered an AI Overview, or what happened on queries where you weren't cited.

There's another catch. Search Console keeps 16 months of data, and AI Overviews have been live in the US since before that window began, so many sites have no pre-AI Overview baseline left to compare against. The method below works around that.

#A query-level method to estimate your loss

You need Search Console, a spreadsheet and a browser.

#Pick a clean comparison window

Use Compare mode in the Performance report. Google's guide to debugging traffic drops suggests comparing the last 3 months with the previous period or with the same period last year. The year-over-year view controls for seasonality.

Avoid windows that straddle a ranking update, or at least note them. According to the Google Search Status Dashboard, the May 2026 core update started May 21 and took about 12 days to roll out, and the September 2026 spam update started September 24 and took about 13.5 days. A ranking shift during those windows can look a lot like an AI Overview effect. If your dates line up with a core update, read our core update recovery guide first.

#Export both periods by query

Open the Queries tab with clicks, impressions, CTR and average position turned on, and export the data for both periods. The UI caps the table at 1,000 rows and leaves anonymized queries out. On large sites, the Search Analytics API returns up to 25,000 rows per request and gives a fuller picture. Our post on Search Console data limitations covers the gaps.

#Remove branded queries

People searching your name want your site, so branded queries behave differently and blur the picture. Use the branded queries filter if your property is eligible, or add a "Queries not containing" filter with your brand name. Note that applying a query filter also drops anonymized queries from the totals.

#Find queries where position held but CTR fell

Keep queries with enough impressions to mean something. For example, you might set a floor of 100 impressions in each period. Then flag rows where average position moved by less than one spot but CTR dropped clearly. These are your candidates.

#Check the live results page

Search each candidate yourself on mobile and desktop. Note whether an AI Overview appears, whether your page is cited in it, and what else sits above you. Results vary by location and device, so record what you saw and when.

No AI Overview? Then the cause is probably elsewhere on the results page, such as ads, featured snippets or a competitor's richer listing. Our guide to clicks dropping while impressions hold covers those suspects.

#Cross-check with the generative AI report

Look up your candidate pages in the generative AI report. If a page gets AI feature impressions and its main queries show steady position with falling CTR, you have a strong case.

#Estimate the lost clicks

For each confirmed query, multiply current impressions by the CTR drop. Say a query had 8,000 impressions this period and CTR fell from 5% to 3% at the same position. That's roughly 160 clicks lost in the period. Add these up for an estimate you can report.

#Add a with-versus-without comparison

If you don't have a clean before and after, compare queries that show an AI Overview today with queries that don't, at similar positions. If your position 1-3 queries with an AI Overview consistently have lower CTR than those without, you've found your site's own version of the effect the studies describe.

#How to tell AI Overview losses from other drops

AI Overviews leave a specific fingerprint. Other causes look different.

If you're not sure whether you have a site-wide problem at all, run the free traffic drop checker before you go query by query.

#What you can do about it

You can't remove AI Overviews from the results page. You can decide where your effort goes.

#Don't panic-rewrite pages that still rank

Google advises against radical changes to pages that perform well. A page that held its position is, by definition, still ranking. Rewriting it to "beat the AI" risks the rankings you have for an uncertain gain.

#Give people a reason to click

Google's helpful content guidance asks whether your content provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis". That's also the hardest thing for a summary to replace: your own data, tested examples, tools, templates, real photos. Put that value in the title and snippet so searchers know it's there before they click.

#Shift effort toward queries that still need a click

Use your spreadsheet from the method above. Queries with an AI Overview and falling CTR may deserve less new investment. Queries where people compare, buy, download or book may deserve more.

#Report on outcomes, not just clicks

Track leads, signups or sales from organic search next to clicks. A CTR drop on quick-answer queries may matter less to the business than it looks on the chart.

#Build demand for your brand

The more people search for you by name, the less you depend on generic queries a summary can answer.

#Keep tracking it over time

AI Overviews come and go on individual queries, so a one-off audit goes stale. A simple monthly routine:

1. Re-run the query comparison for your top non-branded queries.
2. Re-check the live results for your candidate list and update which queries show an AI Overview.
3. Watch the generative AI report trend for your key pages, ignoring the preliminary dotted-line days.
4. Add a custom annotation in Search Console (right-click the Performance chart) when you change a page or notice an AI Overview appear, so the cause is visible on the chart later.
5. Wait a few weeks after any change before judging it. Google notes that some changes show within days and others take months.

Spotting which pages slipped, and when, is the slow part. RankSlide connects to Search Console read-only, checks every page and query daily, flags pages whose clicks fall 15% or more below their average week, explains each drop in plain English with suggested next steps, and emails you an alert. You can explore the demo with sample data.

#FAQ

#Why don't I see the generative AI report in Search Console?

The report became available for all sites worldwide as of August 31, 2026, but it may not appear if your site doesn't have enough impressions in AI features. Smaller sites may need to rely on the query-level method alone.

#Does getting cited in an AI Overview make up for lost clicks?

Don't count on it. Pew found that only about 1% of visits included a click on a link inside the AI summary. Check your own CTR on cited queries rather than assuming either way.

#Are AI Overviews the reason my whole site lost traffic?

They can contribute, but their fingerprint is falling CTR at steady positions on the queries where they appear. A sudden site-wide drop, or falling impressions and rankings, points to something else, so work through a full traffic drop diagnosis first.

#How long should I wait before judging a change?

A few weeks at least. Google says some changes show within days while others take months, and the newest Search Console data is often incomplete for a few days.