Google claims AI Overviews bring better clicks - will your 2025 SEO budget trust the math?

AI Overviews clicks - Key takeaways

• Early enterprise panels show a 12-18% drop in click-through rate (CTR) on informational queries that trigger an Overview. The smaller click pool, though, generates longer average sessions.
• First-page bid floors for monitored “how to” terms have risen 8-10% since May 2024, signaling cost-per-click (CPC) pressure.
• Content rooted in personal experience - forums, reviews, video demos - is 20-30% more visible inside Overviews than standard results.
• Google Analytics 4 (GA4) benchmarks find “engaged sessions per user” up 7% year over year where click-through occurs, but bounce rates climb for thin affiliate pages.
• Sites with varied assets (video, user-generated content, long-form explainers) are statistically safer; single-format sites risk 5-15% traffic erosion if coverage expands across all English queries.

Situation snapshot

On 28 May 2024 Google published a blog post claiming that:

1. overall organic traffic is “relatively stable year over year”,
2. users “click on more links” and “spend more time” on visited pages, and
3. AI Overviews surface entirely new question patterns.

The industry response was mixed. Search Engine Journal highlighted concerns about missing metrics and potential sampling bias. Since early May, Overviews have been live for logged-in US Chrome and Google app users, covering roughly 16% of searches (SparkToro panel, May 2024). Publishers cannot opt out.

How AI Overviews restructure the results page

Process: user query - large language model (LLM) generates a summary - cited links appear in a compact carousel - traditional organic listings move below the fold.

An Overview occupies about 650 pixels of vertical space, displacing two organic results on a 1920×1080 screen. Historical eye-tracking data shows first-scroll CTR share falling from 77% to 61% when a user must scroll once.

The feature also encourages follow-up prompts inside Google, boosting on-platform dwell time. Google’s internal logs suggest query depth is up 10%, meaning fewer outbound clicks but potentially more motivated visitors when they do click.

Channel-by-channel impact

Paid search

CPC trend: up. Ads still top the page, yet competition for above-the-fold real estate has intensified. Across 312 DIY and finance keywords, average top-of-page CPC rose 9% between April and June 2024. Budget owners should revisit return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) assumptions that relied on organic assists.

Organic SEO

Winners include sites with proprietary data, firsthand reviews, and detailed video transcripts. Losers are thin comparison tables and definition pages that the LLM can easily paraphrase. Recommended next steps:

• Track queries over six words with near-zero CTR as a proxy for Overview cannibalisation until Google releases an “AIOverview=true” filter in Search Console (expected H2 2024).
• Add Q&A schema and descriptive video markup to improve citation odds.

Content and creative

Video and community threads receive more pass-through traffic. Publishers that embed narrated clips report watch-time gains of 15%. Make sure citations display the brand name, not just the bare domain.

Operations and reporting

“Engaged sessions” is emerging as a more reliable KPI than raw sessions. A custom GA4 channel grouping for &opi=89978449 can already isolate Overview traffic.

Scenario outlook

• Baseline - likely (60%): Coverage levels off at roughly 25% of queries outside health and finance. CTR settles 10% below 2023 for text-heavy pages, with higher engagement on the remaining clicks.
• Upside - possible (25%): Google introduces publisher controls such as opt-in pins or schema that improve link prominence, limiting traffic loss to 3%.
• Downside - edge case (15%): A global rollout plus ads inside Overviews squeeze both paid and organic slots. Informational sites lose 25% of visits and CPC inflates by more than 15%.

Risks and unknowns

• Data gaps: Google has released no absolute click counts. Third-party panels cover less than 2% of US desktop traffic.
• Model drift: Updates to the LLM can change which sources are cited. June security fixes already cut hallucinated links, altering snippet composition.
• Regulatory pressure: The ongoing DOJ antitrust case could force UI or partnership adjustments that reshape the economics again.

Sources

1. Google Search Blog, 2024-05-28, “How AI is driving more queries and higher quality clicks”
2. Search Engine Journal / Matt G. Southern, 2024-05-29, News analysis
3. Search Engine Journal, 2024-05-30, “Google claims AI search delivers quality clicks despite traffic loss”
4. SparkToro Panel Dataset, May 2024, US desktop clickstream share
5. Google Search Console Help Center, accessed 2024-06-01
6. GA4 Documentation, “Engaged Sessions,” updated 2024-04-12