After bottoming out at 1.3% in December 2025, the click-through rate (CTR) on Google’s AI Overviews climbed to 2.4% in February 2026. That’s an 85% jump in two months, according to new data from Seer Interactive.

Paid Organic Ctr Trends 14 Months SeerPaid Organic Ctr Trends 14 Months Seer

What moves CTR. When an AI Overview appears, pages cited in it get more clicks than pages on that same results page that aren’t cited. But both still get fewer clicks than searches with no AI Overview:

  • No AI Overview: ~3.3% CTR
  • AI Overview with citation: ~2.1% CTR
  • AI Overview without citation: ~0.9% CTR

Where clicks are shifting. Searches without AI Overviews are getting more valuable. CTR on those queries increased from 2.8% in early 2025 to 3.8% by February 2026.

  • One reason: AI Overviews handle quick answers. The users who still click through are looking for more.

AI Overviews vary by query intent. AI Overviews show up unevenly across query types:

  • Informational: ~36% show AIOs
  • Transactional: ~5%
  • Comparison: ~95%
  • Question: ~86%

Yes, but. Lower CTR doesn’t always mean worse results. In some cases, clicks stayed flat while impressions grew. This suggests brands may have appeared in more AI Overviews even as CTR dropped.

Paid search is far more stable. When Google showed an AI Overview, paid CTR rose slightly from 14.6% to 16.2%. When it didn’t, CTR fell from 26% to 21.8%.

Why we care. Google’s AI Overviews aren’t just reducing clicks — they’re redistributing them, sending more traffic to sites they cite and far less to those they don’t. That means you need to get featured in AI Overviews and also focus more on searches where people click.

About the data. Seer studied 53 brands, 5.47 million queries, and 2.43 billion impressions from January 2025 to February 2026.

The report. AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update

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Danny GoodwinDanny Goodwin

Danny Goodwin is Editorial Director of Search Engine Land & Search Marketing Expo – SMX. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022 as Senior Editor. In addition to reporting on the latest search marketing news, he manages Search Engine Land’s SME (Subject Matter Expert) program. He also helps program U.S. SMX events.

Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest developments and trends in search and digital marketing since 2007. He previously was Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal (from 2017 to 2022), managing editor of Momentology (from 2014-2016) and editor of Search Engine Watch (from 2007 to 2014). He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.