Google Search Click Decline - A Shocking 60% Decline in Clicks to the Web

I really didn't want to write this, given that I work in SEO & that Google is effectively my "bread and butter" when it comes to earning money - so highlighting how much damage Google is doing to the web is counter-productive, but, I feel it's a topic that we as SEOs can no longer ignore.

Google is sending less and less traffic to the open web, it's obvious & its impacting a LOT of businesses from small to medium sized publishers through to newspapers, magazines as well as sites that used their blog as leverage for brand, product and service awareness.

We're seeing it everywhere now - moreso since the rollout of Google AI Overviews and subsequent Google core updates which entrenched more SERPS with AI generated summaries.

So before I get into the study I did which is based on ACTUAL data, let me first pre-face the study by highlighting some things such as the "exchange of click value" - it's important you understand this because it helps to provide some clarity as to why what Google is doing is unfair, wrong & causing a lot of harm to businesses globally.

So firstly, before you say it "Google owes us nothing" well, yes it does, if Google is crawling & serving your content perhaps you could argue it doesn;t, but, if Google is crawling your content and using it to train Gemini, then it does owe you.

For a long time Google + webmasters had a harmonious balance - Google crawled your website, indexed it and served it to end users in search and that was that for 20+ years. Yes, during this time we saw Google go through a myriad of changes, releasing changes to how ads appeared in search through to rolling out new SERP features such as knowledge boxes, listings, PAAs (people also ask) and many other features.

For about two decades, the relationship between websites and Google ran on a simple, unwritten agreement, crawlers like Googlebot crawled & indexed your content, search results sent visitors, and visitors generated revenue, the exchange worked because both sides profited. You paid in crawl budget and server load; Google paid you back in qualified traffic. Critically, the terms of trade were generous. A decade ago Google crawled roughly two pages for every visitor it sent you. The deal was so good that an entire industry (SEO/Bloggers/affiliates) was built on the premise that earning position a top 3 position was effectively earning traffic.

In short SEOS had a harmonious balance with Google - Google crawled our sites, served them to users - Google won because it allowed them to refine and improve their search results, and, obviously they needed organic results to serve paid ads over. Google won, webmasters/SEOs won.

That is until AI + Gemini came along, Google decided to cut the deal down to crawling your content more and serving it less or using it for AI generated summaries in search results which significantly reduces click through rates.

The deterioration shows up most cleanly in Cloudflare's crawl-to-referral ratio, which measures how many pages a platform fetches for every visitor it returns. Google's crawler went from about 2:1 ten years ago, to 6:1 in late 2024, to roughly 14:1 by mid-2025 - even as its total search impressions rose nearly 50% in the year after AI Overviews launched. By the time Cloudflare publicised the figures, that ratio had drifted to around 18:1, suggesting Google is maintaining its crawling while cutting referrals. Read that back slowly: you are being asked for more of your content than ever, while being paid back less per unit than at any point in the relationship's history - I like to refer to this as enshittification of the web.

Enshittification Phase 1

The first phase of Google hammering webmasters began after AI overviews were first rolled out in the US in May 2024 and other countries from August 2024. AI overviews started out as SGE (search generative experience) - they initially popped up in a small portion of search results (sub 10% of all searches).

The initial roll-out of SGE was littered with issues, they were a laughing stock of the SEO and wider marketing community - often dishing out terrible, sometimes dangerous advice:

We saw everything from Google's SGE recommending people to drink urine through to using glue on pizzas.

Not long after, Google revamped SGE into Google AI Overviews which worked on Google Gemini.

We then saw progressive roll-outs of AI overviews to more and more SERPS.

Enshittification Phase 2

After the re-brand of SGE to AI Overviews, we saw Google roll these out at a progressively increasing rate - it didn't take long for AI overviews to start appearing for 20%, then 30% then 50% of keyword searches in Google.

Now, consider that there are over 14 BILLION searches a day on Google as of 2026, that's at LEAST 7 BILLION keywords where AI overviews are served.

Now imagine the impact of that on clicks?

Even AHREFS AI overview studies struggle to keep up - we see above in the space of less than a year estimated click reduction went from 34% to a staggering 58%.

So, imagine if 7 BILLION of the 14 BILLION searches saw a 58% click loss to the open web?

And, Google shows NO signs of slowing down.

We see that AI overview expansion happens on Google Core Updates - so it's likely their AI overview expansion will eventually be present on ALL searches.

And, this is where our study comes in.

We analysed over 100m keywords to see what the click decline looked like over the past 3 years.

Using our seo agency account on SEO stack, we looked across the hundreds of websites we have access to - many websites with over 1m keywords each, so we had a huge dataset to work with.

Seeing this has become more and more common:

Some of the sites we look at have over 10m up to 100m clicks per year, so we have lots of data to work with.

Look at this >

Look at the abomination that is the CTR - as average positions for the domain went up, CTR decline outpaced any benefit leading to click loss.

Now, this is INCREDIBLY frustrating because Google promised us more clicks.

Liz Reid famously said Google AI Overviews would lead to more clicks:

But, as we know this was a lie.

Could this be why Google hasn't shown click data in the upcoming release of generative AI performance reporting in Google Search Console?

I mean Google HAS the data, so why would you omit it? Doesn't make sense really, why would you just report on impressions and not on the queries / clicks?

Anyhow - we know Google is SENDING LESS and LESS traffic - so, we took a look at 100 million queries, we averaged out the clicks by position across all the domains, we then looked at the decline month by month over the last 3 years.

The Study: Where Did Clicks Go?

In this study we looked at 100,023,790 keywords for a total of 160m clicks. We took the warehoused GSC data and looked at the last 3 years of data. As anyone who uses SEO Stack will know we warehouse 10+ years of GSC data for SEO stack users!

Here is what we found:

You can see a staggering decline in the average volume of clicks position 1 receives as opposed to 3 years ago.

Here's what it looks like in chart format:

So let's compare - here is May 3 years ago

fast forward 3 years and we see

The impact this has had on publishers, SEO/site owners, affiliate sites is absolutely staggering.

And, if this wasn't bad enough, this followed not long after Google dropped the HCU (helpful content updates) which hit a LARGE volume of affiliate sites, review sites, publication sites - many of which are also ones to suffer sustained click loss to Google AI overviews.

Make no bones about it - Google gobbled up the web, trained Gemini and now, in the interest of share-holders they want MORE paid clicks and more people to remain in its ecosystem.

Google's pushing hard on integrating AI into every facet of search - so expect more clicks to be swallowed up.

If we look at Google's expanded ecosystem we now have AI Mode, AI Overviews, GEMINI and traditional search results.

We know Google is going hard on AI integration into search - and, we're seeing more and more AI Mode/AI Overview integration into search - progressively fueling a decline in clicks (but not impressions).

AI Overviews swallow clicks, BUT, also now when they are expanded they lead people into AI mode:

If you look at TRADITIONAL SERPS vs AI MODE / AI OVERVIEWS - you can see where Google has kept clickable links, BUT, when you compare the prominence and design flow it's easy to see why clicks get lost in AI searches over traditional SERPS.

The Sad Reality for SEOs (challenge)

The sad reality for many SEOs is that the CRUCIAL baseline for determining SEO success is typically Rankings, Clicks and ultimately REVENUE.

AI Overviews have eaten into all of these in their own way.

RANKINGS VS CLICKS

Ranking more prominently now doesn't nessescarily lead to the click growth we come to expect - and that makes the trade-off for SEO all that much more difficult to address. It now is far more a NUMBERS GAME, with click losses growing at position 1 - you basically have to rank for a much wider pool of keywords (whilst dominating AI overviews) to compensate.

Look at this for example - here is a website where GOOD SEO has been delivered -

The number of position 1-3s has gone up significantly in the last few months, yet clicks still aren;t there - ok, in this snapshot a MAJORITY of the position 1-3 growth is keywords into position 3, so we'll see click recovery soon, BUT, pre AI overviews we would of seen significant click recovery much sooner.

If you look at the impact on IMPRESSIONS and CLICKS together we see >

Impressions have gone through the roof as have positions 1-3 but where are the clicks?

The challenge for SEOs is now much broader it requires:

RANKING PROMINENTLY IN AI OVERVIEWS

This isn;t optional anymore, SEO strategies really need to hone in and focus on not only gaining more of the top 1 positions but also covering AI overviews thoroughly to maximise the chance of a click.

The thing is, Google REALLY IS pushing so hard on revenue, they're making getting organic clicks a lot harder.

Take SEO Consultant as a search term - in the UK I rank #1 for SEO Consultant on average -if I do a search now I get this >

Google's even pushing extended ads above AI Overviews now (and sometimes DUAL AI OVERVIEWS) or Dual Ads (ads above the fold and half way down the page).

The thing is - you may not realise it but the actual PIXEL COVERAGE your results have is significantly lower, so click probability falls.

Click probability falls in AI OVERVIEWS primarily because:

• AI OVERVIEWS will sometimes answer the end users question enough that they do not need to visit websites

• AI OVERVIEWS can give instructions and guidance and leads on to AI mode to expand answering a users query, reducing the need to click on an organic result

• AI Overviews show significantly LESS in respect of clickable links

I mean - where are you more likely to click?

Then you need to consider SERP features - often we can find SERPS where anything outside of position 3 drops SO far down the page the CTR likely nosedives by 80%-90%+

Look at this

Positions 1-3 already have to contend with AI Overviews and sponsored ads eating into CTR, but look at position 4, it's a good 2-3 scrolls down the page.

The difference in 1 organic position here can effectively be make or break for clicks (less so for impressions).

So, now, lets look at my own SEO consultancy website >

So, we can't say I haven't tried here - I've always been passionate about ranking my own assets and running SEO experiments to find what works.

Now despite this - let's look at the GSC data for my website for the term "SEO consultant"

Notice anything here? especially after the AI overview roll out?

Seeing a pattern yet?

It's "Google's version of AI overviews sending us more clicks" - except the reality is they DO NOT SEND MORE CLICKS.

AI Overviews and AI mode are NOT there to generate clicks, they are there to generate revenue (moreso for Google).

As Google squeezes organic CTR down a tube it forces more advertisers into PPC as a pay to play market - don't be mistaken, this is all by design.