AI Overviews are not just changing how search results look. They are changing how many clicks those results receive. This aggregated dataset from four research sources maps CTR impact across eight query and page categories, and the pattern is consistent: informational and educational content is losing clicks at rates ranging from 34 to 61 percent, while branded queries with AI Overviews are gaining. The divergence between informational and branded performance is the most important signal for how teams should rebalance their organic content strategy in response.

Essential Statistics

• Informational and educational queries with AI Overviews show a 61 percent CTR decline, the largest negative impact in the dataset.
• Top-ranking pages following the 2026 update show a 58 percent CTR decline, indicating that even high-ranking informational content is heavily affected.
• General search with AI summary shows a 46.7 percent CTR decline.
• Informational and educational queries without AI Overviews show a 41 percent CTR decline, suggesting that AI Overview expansion is affecting CTR even on queries where the overview does not appear, likely through user behavior changes.
• AIO plus featured snippet overlap produces a 37 percent CTR decline, and top-ranking informational pages from 2025 show a 34.5 percent decline.
• Non-branded queries with AI Overviews show a 20 percent CTR decline.
• Branded queries with AI Overviews are the only positive entry in the dataset, showing an 18.7 percent CTR increase.

Key Takeaways

• The 61 percent CTR decline on informational queries with AI Overviews is not a rounding error. At that scale, a page generating 10,000 monthly organic clicks before AI Overview expansion could be generating fewer than 4,000 clicks today on the same ranking position. Content strategies built around informational traffic need to be reframed around what that traffic is actually worth going forward.
• The 18.7 percent CTR gain on branded queries with AI Overviews is the most actionable positive finding in the chart. AI Overviews on branded searches appear to add credibility and context that increases click-through, which means brand-building investment has a measurable organic search benefit in the AI Overview environment.
• The 41 percent CTR decline on informational queries without AI Overviews is a behavioral signal. Users are beginning to expect AI-generated answers even when they are not present, which is reducing click-through rates across informational intent queries regardless of whether an AI Overview actually appears on that specific query.
• The 58 percent CTR decline on top-ranking pages following the 2026 update confirms that ranking position no longer protects traffic volume the way it did before AI Overview expansion. A page that ranks first but sits below an AI Overview is effectively in a lower-traffic position than its ranking would historically have implied.
• The non-branded query decline at 20 percent is less severe than informational content, which points to a differentiation between question-answering content, which AI answers directly, and commercial intent content, where users still need to visit a site to complete a transaction.

Actionable Insights

• Audit your top organic traffic pages and segment them by query intent type using the categories in this chart. Informational and educational pages are the highest-risk segment. Identify which of your top-traffic pages fall into the informational category and model a 40 to 60 percent CTR reduction scenario for those pages as your planning baseline. That exercise will reveal which revenue or lead projections need to be revised and which content types need to be deprioritized in future production investment.
• Shift content production investment toward middle and bottom-of-funnel pages that carry commercial intent rather than informational intent. The 20 percent non-branded CTR decline is significantly smaller than the 61 percent informational decline, and the companion data in this batch shows that comparison pages convert AI traffic at 6.8 percent. Redirecting production capacity from informational how-to content toward comparison pages, product explainers, and evaluation-stage content addresses both the CTR protection and conversion quality opportunities simultaneously.
• Build brand search CTR tracking into your SEO reporting as a leading indicator of AI Overview impact on your brand specifically. The 18.7 percent branded CTR gain shows that AI Overviews on branded queries are additive, not subtractive. If your branded CTR is not reflecting this gain, it may indicate that your brand is not being cited in AI Overviews on branded terms, which is an optimization opportunity rather than a measurement artifact.
• Update your organic traffic forecasts to apply query-intent-specific CTR adjustment factors rather than using a single CTR multiplier across all content types. Applying a 50 percent reduction to informational content traffic projections and a flat or positive adjustment to branded and commercial content projections produces a more accurate forward-looking model than applying a uniform AI Overview discount across your full keyword portfolio.
• Prioritize GEO optimization specifically for informational content that is losing CTR. If AI Overviews are intercepting clicks on your informational content, the most viable alternative traffic path is becoming the source that the AI Overview cites. A page that loses organic clicks to an AI Overview but is itself the cited source in that overview captures brand exposure and authority credit even when the direct click does not occur.

“Informational content is down 61 percent on CTR. Branded queries are up 18.7 percent. That divergence is the most important signal in organic search right now. The teams that respond by shifting production toward commercial and branded content while optimizing informational content for AI citation rather than direct CTR are the ones who will navigate the AI Overview transition with the least revenue impact.” – Neil Patel