Google AIO CTR Rebound

Seer Interactive says Google searches that show AI Overviews started sending a larger share of users to organic results in early 2026 after a year of decline. (seerinteractive.com) (searchengineland.com) In Seer’s April 24, 2026 update, organic click-through rate on queries with AI Overviews rose from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026. Seer called that an 85% jump in two months. (seerinteractive.com) (searchengineland.com) The dataset is larger than Seer’s earlier work: 53 brands, 5.47 million tracked queries, and 2.43 billion organic impressions, with actual data through February 2026 and March 2026 projections. (seerinteractive.com) Seer’s earlier September 2025 report had found the opposite direction. On informational queries where AI Overviews appeared, organic CTR had fallen from 1.41% to 0.64%, and paid CTR also dropped. (seerinteractive.com) The new report says AI Overviews still depress clicks relative to a standard results page. Search Engine Land summarized Seer’s February 2026 numbers at about 3.3% CTR for queries with no AI Overview, 2.1% when an AI Overview cited the page, and 0.9% when it did not. (searchengineland.com) Seer also says searches without AI Overviews have become more valuable. Search Engine Land reported CTR on those queries rose from 2.8% in early 2025 to 3.8% by February 2026. (searchengineland.com) The mix of queries matters. Search Engine Land, citing Seer, reported AI Overviews appeared on roughly 36% of informational queries, 5% of transactional queries, 95% of comparison queries, and 86% of question queries. (searchengineland.com) Seer says its Q4 2025 model had projected CTR on AI Overview queries would keep falling into 2026, but January and February data came in above that forecast by more than 2.5 percentage points in some cases. (seerinteractive.com) The firm does not say search traffic is back to pre-AI Overview levels. It says the decline has slowed, and the current pattern may mark a leveling-off after a major Google search-results change. (seerinteractive.com) That leaves the same split Seer flagged in 2025: pages included in an AI Overview tend to get more clicks than pages on the same results page that are not included, but both groups still trail queries with no AI Overview at all. (seerinteractive.com) (searchengineland.com)