AI Overviews are Google’s generated summaries at the top of some search results. Two studies, one from Pew Research Center and one from Ahrefs, are quoted most often when people ask what they do to clicks. Quoting them side by side without checking what each one measured leads to bad forecasts.
- Pew’s March 2025 browsing data from 900 U.S. adults showed clicks on regular results in 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one.
- Ahrefs’ February 2026 study of 300,000 keywords found AI Overviews correlated with a 58% lower click-through rate (CTR) for the top-ranking page.
- Pew measures user behavior across all searches. Ahrefs models CTR change for one ranking position on specific keywords.
- Neither study shows what happens to your leads, so treat both as inputs to your own re-baselined reporting.
What Pew measured
Pew Research Center’s July 2025 analysis tracked the Google browsing of 900 U.S. adults in an online panel who had installed a tracking app. The data covers March 2025. Pew then reran each search in April 2025 to record whether an AI summary appeared.
Users clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits to pages with an AI summary and in 15% of visits to pages without one. Only 1% of visits with a summary included a click on a link inside the summary itself. About 18% of the 68,879 unique searches in the sample produced a summary.
The implication is that Pew describes user behavior across everyday searching, not the performance of any ranking position. Pew also notes that summaries change over time, so the April rerun reflects how they looked when collected.
What Ahrefs measured
Ahrefs published its update on February 4, 2026, using aggregated Google Search Console data from its own tool, desktop only. It compared 150,000 keywords that triggered an AI Overview with 150,000 informational keywords that did not, using December 2023 as the pre-rollout baseline and December 2025 as the current period.
For position one, CTR on AI Overview keywords fell from 0.073 to 0.016. Ahrefs forecast what that CTR would have been without the feature, using the decline in the non-AI-Overview group, and put the gap at 58%. Its April 2025 version of the study had reported 34.5%.
The reduction was smaller further down the page, ranging from 50.8% at position two to 19.4% at position ten. Ahrefs describes the result as a correlation and acknowledges that zero-click trends such as featured snippets began before AI Overviews.
Why the numbers are not interchangeable
The two studies answer different questions. Pew asks how often searchers click anything when a summary is present. Ahrefs asks how much a top-ranked page’s CTR changed relative to a modeled counterfactual. A 58% relative drop and a drop from 15% to 8% of visits are different kinds of statements.
| Dimension | Pew Research Center | Ahrefs |
|---|---|---|
| Published | July 2025 | February 2026 |
| Data period | March 2025 | December 2023 vs. December 2025 |
| Sample | 900 U.S. adults, 68,879 unique searches | 300,000 keywords |
| Source | Browsing-app panel data | Search Console data, desktop only |
| Headline | 8% vs. 15% of visits with a result click | 58% lower CTR at position one |
| Main limit | Google only; summaries rerun a few weeks later | Correlation based on a modeled baseline |
The reader implication is practical. If you quote “58%” in a board deck as your expected traffic loss, you are applying a relative CTR change from one ranking position to your whole site. Your own query mix decides how many of your keywords trigger a summary at all.
How to re-baseline your own reporting
Your search console data already contains the answer for your site. The steps below use only data you own, so the result does not depend on whose study you trust.
- Export query-level clicks, impressions and average position from Google Search Console for the last 16 months.
- Split queries into informational and commercial intent, since Ahrefs’ comparison group was informational keywords.
- Check a sample of your top queries in a logged-out browser to see which trigger an AI Overview, and tag them.
- Compare CTR at the same average position before and after your tagged queries began showing summaries.
- Report leads and revenue from organic search next to clicks, so a CTR decline is read against the outcome that pays.
Our guide on measuring AI search visibility when answers change every run covers the citation side of the same problem. Our overview of what AI search means for SEO in 2026 explains where these summaries fit among the other answer engines.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do AI Overviews reduce organic clicks?
Both Pew and Ahrefs report lower click rates when a summary is present. Pew found 8% of visits with a result click versus 15% without. Ahrefs found a 58% lower CTR at position one, which it labels a correlation.
Is the 58% figure the same as a 58% traffic loss?
No. It is the change in CTR for the top-ranking page on keywords that show an AI Overview, relative to a modeled baseline. Site-wide traffic also depends on how many of your keywords trigger a summary.
Do links inside an AI Overview get clicked?
Rarely, according to Pew’s March 2025 data, where 1% of visits to pages with a summary included a click on a link inside the summary. Being cited builds visibility, but it has not replaced the click.
Click data tells you where attention moved, not which visitors turned into customers. At Grow with Hafsa we help teams connect AI search visibility to AI marketing and performance measurement, so decisions follow revenue and not only a CTR chart.