AI insight cited by the brand CTR fell 61% from Q3 to Q4, according to a new report from Seer Interactivebut clicks on those pages barely budged.
The decline looks alarming on a dashboard, although it’s not quite what it seems. Seer’s analysis of 5.47 million queries across 53 brands clearly shows what’s happening
What happened in the fourth quarter
In September, pages cited by the brand 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 fell to 1.21% as impressions grew rapidly outpacing clicks.
This is not a performance slump, but a mathematical problem caused by impressions growing faster than clicks.
November is another story
November impressions reached 39.5 million, but clicks dropped to 301,783 and CTR fell to 0.76%.
Something went down as visibility increased, and Seer’s data can’t explain why. For Q4, the two models combine to reach a figure of 61%, showing that it is important to analyze months separately in Search Console data.
What the psychic can’t tell you
The agency is clear on one limitation: It can’t determine whether October’s surge in impressions is because Google is offering AI previews for more queries where brands have already been cited, or whether brands earned citations through their SEO. Both explanations agree, and neither can be confirmed without a detailed analysis of the story.
Websites with similar data face the same ambiguity. Growing impressions are good if they’re earned, but they’re noisy if they’re a result of Google’s decisions. Your dashboard might not clarify this without account-level query analysis.
How does this fit in with previous CTR AIO coverage
Several studies show lower CTRs when AI previews appear. Ahrefs parsed 146 million results and found an AIO trigger rate of 20.5%, which was higher for information and question queries.
A SISTRIX analysis in Germany, a 59% drop in top-ranked CTR with AIOs was reported, and Research on the bench found that US users clicked 8% of the time with AIOs, compared to 15% without.
Seer’s October data raises the question of whether a drop in CTR on cited pages still means fewer clicks or may indicate greater viewability with the same number of clicks.
Other results of note
Brand-cited pages generate about 120% more clicks per impression than non-cited pages on AIO SERPs, but cited pages lag behind non-AIO pages by 38%. A citation is useful, but it does not restore previous rankings.
Seer reports that organic CTR on AIO SERPs increased from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, but calls this a stabilization rather than a recovery and advises against forecasts based on two months of data.
Why it matters
A drop in CTR in your Q4 data doesn’t necessarily mean you’re losing clicks; check prints for the same period before assuming there is a problem.
Benchmarks show general trends, but your data tells your specific story. If clicks remain stable or increase faster than impressions, the problem is different from actual decline.
Looking to the future
The main thing to watch for is whether the added visibility of the AI Overview starts to generate more clicks, or whether cited pages continue to absorb more impressions without much of an increase in traffic.
If this trend continues, the value of being cited may look different than what CTR alone suggests. You may need to separate viewability, clicks, and citation coverage before deciding whether exposure to AI Overview is useful or simply changes how performance is measured.
Featured Image: TaniaKitura/Shutterstock
