Brand-cated AI Overview CTR dropped 61% from Q3 to Q4, according to a new report from Seer Interactive, but clicks on those pages haven’t kept pace.
The descent looks scary on the dashboard, although it’s not what it looks like. Industry’s analysis of 5.47 million inquiries across 53 brands clearly shows what’s happening
What Happened in Q4
In September, pages cited in AI Overviews received 15.8 million impressions and 398,798 clicks, with a CTR of 2.52%.
In October, impressions doubled to 33.1 million, and clicks rose slightly to 400,271, but CTR dropped to 1.21% as impression growth outpaced clicks.
This is not a performance bottleneck but a statistical problem caused by faster growth than clicks.
November is a Different Story
November impressions increased to 39.5 million, but clicks decreased to 301,783, and CTR decreased to 0.76%.
Something has decreased clicks while visibility has increased, and the Observer data can’t explain why. In Q4, both patterns converged to a figure of 61%, which shows that it is important to analyze the months separately in the Search Console data.
What a Seer Can Tell You
The agency is clear on one limitation: it cannot determine whether the October appearance was caused by Google giving AI Overview more questions where brands were already cited, or because brands received citations through their SEO. Both explanations are equivalent, and neither can be confirmed without a detailed analysis of the account.
Websites with the same data face the same ambiguity. Increased impressions are great when earned, but noise when they come from Google’s decisions. Your dashboard may not clarify this without an account-level query analysis.
How does this compare to the previous AIO CTR cover
Several studies show lower CTRs when AI Overviews appear. Ahrefs analyzed 146 million results and found an AIO trigger rate of 20.5%, which was higher for informational and query queries.
Analysis by SISTRIX in Germany reported a 59% drop in CTR in the first place with AIOs, and Pew Research found that US users clicked 8% of the time with AIOs compared to 15% without.
Seer’s October data raises the question of whether a falling CTR on cited pages always means fewer clicks or could indicate greater visibility with the same number of clicks.
Other Important Findings to Note
Citation pages with a brand receive about 120% more clicks per impression than pages that are not mentioned in AIO SERPs, but cited pages lag behind no-AIO pages by 38%. The quote helps, but it doesn’t bring back previous levels.
Seer reports that organic CTR on AIO SERPs increased from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, but calls this a regression rather than a recovery and advises against forecasting based on two months’ data.
Why This Matters
A falling CTR in your Q4 data doesn’t mean you’re losing clicks; check the impressions at the same time before you assume there is a problem.
Benchmarks show general trends, but your data tells your own story. If clicks remain low or grow faster than impressions, it’s a different problem than an actual decline.
Looking Forward
The main thing to watch is whether the visibility of the added AI overview starts to drive more clicks, or whether the cited pages continue to absorb more views without looking up traffic.
If that pattern persists, the number of citations may look different from what CTR alone suggests. You may need to separate impressions, clicks, and citations before deciding whether exposure to AI Overview is useful or simply changing the way performance is measured.
Featured Image: Tania Kitura/Shutterstock
