AI Overviews appear in 25% of US searches. Organic CTR drops 61% when they show. Zero-click searches hit 60%.
1 min read
What changed
AI Overviews now appear in 25.8% of all US searches, rising to 39% for informational queries
Organic CTR drops 61% (from 1.76% to 0.61%) when an AI Overview is present
60% of Google searches now end without a click. On mobile, that figure is 77%. In AI Mode, it hits 93%
What it means
The overlap between top-10 rankings and AI Overview citations has collapsed from 75% to as low as 17%. Ranking well no longer guarantees visibility in AI answers. But there is a counterweight: brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks. The game has shifted from ranking to being cited. For Australian businesses competing on informational queries, this demands a different content strategy.
What to do
Audit your top traffic pages in Search Console for CTR changes over the last 90 days
Structure content to be citation-worthy: clear answers, original data, named sources
Build entity authority through consistent brand mentions, structured data and topical depth
Source: Seer Interactive, Stackmatix, Search Engine Journal