Everyone has been asking, what is the click-through rate you get from Google Search AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. Well, a new small study says the click-through rate is about 0.9%. The study also showed that when you opt out of showing in Google's Search generative AI, it also leads to a drop in clicks in the main web results.
Cyrus Shepard posted on LinkedIn what he called a "small case study" where he used the Search generative AI opt out controls to block a site from showing in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. This allowed him to compare the impressions, clicks and click-through rate of when the site was in AI Overviews and when the site was out of the AI Overviews. Keep in mind, AI Overviews probably still showed up on the search results page for those queries, but his site did not show in those AI Overviews.
He said, "AI impressions had an estimated ~0.9% CTR based on analyzing overall before/after click data (not too shabby)." 0/9% is not as bad as you'd expect, but again, this is a super limited study based on a small sample size. But again, I have not seen anyone else produce data like this because everyone else is probably too afraid to opt out of the generative AI features in Google Search.
He also said that the AI impressions go immediately to 0. And he said, "most surprisingly, regular organic clicks ALSO DROPPED when AI features were disabled."
That means that when you opt out of showing in AI Mode and AI Overviews, it will likely also impact your click-through rate on the regular web organic results.
He shared this chart:
"This admittedly small case study supports the concept of AI creating a "Search SERP Halo Effect" - the more places you can get your brand to appear, the more likely a user will click at least one of them," Cyrus wrote. He added, "So earning an AI citation link/mention may influence higher clicks anywhere on the SERP, even regular organic results further down the page."
Cyrus also shared that sitewide, the "average position actually increased (due to a couple of new posts + brand search) but on individual URLs with the most AI visibility, there was a drop and then a rise when AI visibility was turned back on."
He said that "overall impressions dropped. AI impressions were about 8% of total impressions."
I asked Cyrus to clarify the presence of AI Overviews on the page, related to his experiment and he told me:
- Yes, there were AI Overviews before, during, and after the experiment.
- The site appeared in AI Overviews before and after, but not during the experiment
- 0.9% is the estimated CTR of AI impressions (before and after), calculated by looking at overall site CTR + impressions and subtracting known AI impressions during the experiment period.
Greg Sterling added in the comments that showing up in AI Overviews likely helps with click-through rates later on in the web results. He said, "We’ve seen in our research at Near Media that AI overviews create a kind of brand lift or awareness that translates into subsequent searches and clicks, not consistently but many times."
I would love to see more people test this out... The issue is, again, AI Overviews still showed up on the search results page, so it is not comparing clicks on web results with and without AI Overviews on the search result page - if that makes sense.
Forum discussion at LinkedIn.
