New study shows Google organic and paid CTRs have hit a new low
Organic and paid click-through rates (CTRs) are reported to have declined with the introduction of Google’s AI Overviews playing a role. A study carried out by Seer Interactive reveals that organic CTRs have dropped from 1.41% to 0.64% on average when AI overviews are present on the SERP, but increasing when absent. For paid CTRs, the study showed that this had declined across the board, regardless of whether an AI overview was present or not.
However, the flip side to this is when a brand appeared within the AI Overviews, then the CTRs for both paid and organic performed better. Organic CTRs increased from 0.74% to 1.02% and paid CTRs increased from 7.89% to 11% on average.
This data does indicate that AI Overviews influence search visibility and how users interact with the SERP but not necessarily in a way that benefits every website. Google still states that AI overviews enhance users’ search satisfaction, but the data does tell different narratives about this.
We spoke to Sara Taher, SEO consultant and Speaker, about this update:
Expert opinion
Sara Taher, SEO consultant and Speaker
"While the organic CTRs have dropped from 1.41% to 0.64% on average when AI overviews are present on the SERP, but increasing when absent, appearing in AI Overviews increases the CTR too. Which is good news, it only means we can no longer measure CTR solely on the clicks to the 10 blue links. So far AI Overviews is focused on mid to low/zero search volume keywords, and many of the keywords AI Overviews appear for were long tail complex conversational keywords. Many of those queries had no good answers in SERPs so even if we used to get those clicks, they may not have been very valuable to us. It’s also time we connect the number of organic clicks, organic sessions, and organic conversions to see the actual impact vs. judging by one metric, the CTR. CTR as a metric is a tricky one, if AIO caused a 50% drop in clicks, this can be 1 click of 2 clicks, or 1000 clicks of 2000. I’m not dismissing the study, but we need other metrics to see the full picture and understand the “business impact”. The Paid CTR decreases across the board, regardless of whether an AI overview was present or not. I have no idea why, but this should mean more clicks to organic results that appear with no AI overviews right? Overall great study, but my recommendation is to look at different metrics to understand what we actually lost - and potentially gained - and not just the CTR, in this new era of search."
