Brand-cited AI Overview CTR fell 61% from Q3 to Q4, according to a new report from Seer Interactive, but the clicks on those pages barely moved.
The drop looks alarming on a dashboard, though it isn’t quite what it seems. Seer’s analysis of 5.47 million queries across 53 brands clearly shows what’s happening
What Happened In Q4
In September, brand-cited pages in AI Overviews received 15.8 million impressions and 398,798 clicks, with a CTR of 2.52%.
In October, impressions doubled to 33.1 million, and clicks increased slightly to 400,271, but CTR dropped to 1.21% as rapid impression growth outpaced clicks.
This isn’t a performance collapse but a math issue caused by faster impression growth than clicks.
November Is A Different Story
November’s impressions rose to 39.5 million, but clicks dropped to 301,783, and CTR fell to 0.76%.
Something pulled clicks down while visibility increased, and Seer’s data can’t explain why. For Q4, both patterns combine into a 61% figure, showing it’s important to analyze months separately in Search Console data.
What Seer Can’t Tell You
The agency is clear on one limit: it can’t determine whether the October impression surge was due to Google serving AI Overviews for more queries where brands were already cited, or because the brands earned citations through their SEO. Both explanations fit, and neither can be confirmed without a detailed analysis of the account.
Websites with similar data face the same ambiguity. Growing impressions are good if earned, but noise if they result from Google’s decisions. Your dashboard might not clarify this without account-level query analysis.
How This Fits With Past AIO CTR Coverage
Several studies show lower CTRs when AI Overviews appear. Ahrefs analyzed 146 million results and found a 20.5% AIO trigger rate, which was higher for informational and question queries.
A SISTRIX analysis in Germany reported a 59% drop in CTR at position one with AIOs, and Pew Research found that U.S. users clicked 8% of the time with AIOs versus 15% without.
Seer’s October data raises the question of whether a falling CTR on cited pages always means fewer clicks or can indicate greater visibility with the same click count.
Other Findings Worth Noting
Brand-cited pages get about 120% more clicks per impression than uncited pages on AIO SERPs, but cited pages lag behind no-AIO pages by 38%. A citation helps, but it doesn’t restore previous rankings.
Seer reports that organic CTR on AIO SERPs rose from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, but calls this a leveling off rather than a recovery and advises against forecasting based on two months’ data.
Why This Matters
A falling CTR in your Q4 data doesn’t necessarily mean you’re losing clicks; check impressions for the same period before assuming there’s a problem.
Benchmarks show general trends, but your data tells your specific story. If clicks stay flat or grow faster than impressions, it’s a different issue than actual decline.
Looking Ahead
The main thing to watch is whether added AI Overview visibility starts driving more clicks, or whether cited pages continue absorbing more impressions without much traffic upside.
If that pattern holds, the value of being cited may look different from what CTR alone suggests. You may need to separate visibility, clicks, and citation coverage before deciding whether AI Overview exposure is helping or simply changing how performance gets measured
Featured Image: TaniaKitura/Shutterstock
