When Google first rolled out AI Overviews, the reaction we observed across the SEO community was deep concern over declining organic clicks. For a while, the data seemed to support those concerns. Users were getting answers directly at the top of search results, meaning fewer people were clicking through to websites – known as zero click searches – and it raised a significant question for brands investing in organic visibility as to what happens when Google becomes the destination instead of the starting point?
However, new data from Seer Interactive shows that important metrics are becoming more balanced than we may have expected. After tracking organic performance across billions of impressions and millions of queries over the past year, its latest findings show that click-through rates (CTR) on searches featuring AI Overviews are beginning to recover. More importantly, the report details opportunities for brands that adapt their SEO and GEO strategies.
Organic CTRs Are Starting to Recover
When AI Overviews first started appearing in search results, CTRs dropped sharply. Seer Interactive’s original research from 2025 showed significant declines and unpredictable fluctuations across all types of search queries. At the time, we weren’t the only ones who thought that the downward trend would continue as AI Overviews expanded.
In its latest report, Seer International analysed:
- 5.47 million tracked queries
- 2.4 billion organic impressions
- Informational, commercial and transactional searches
According to the findings, organic CTR for searches with an AI Overview increased from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026. While this is below the 3.2% CTR recorded in January 2025, before AI Overviews became more prevalent, it represents an 85% improvement over the December decline. At the same time, searches without AI Overviews also saw CTR improvements, increasing from 2.8% to 3.8% over the same period. The key takeaway is that the sharp CTR decrease we saw in 2025 hasn’t continued into early 2026 at the same pace.
AI Citations Are Becoming Their Own Form of Visibility
One of the more interesting findings from the report is how citations in AI Overviews are affecting user behaviour on Google. Brands cited in AI Overviews still tend to see lower CTRs overall compared to traditional organic results, but that doesn’t necessarily mean engagement has dropped off. Instead, user interaction is changing. People are now:
- Clicking citation links directly in AI Overviews
- Running follow-up searches after seeing cited brands
- Engaging with brands earlier in the research process
In other words, visibility within AI-generated answers may now play a similar role that featured snippets once did, influencing awareness and consideration even when the click path looks different. The report also found that brands cited in AI Overviews received more than 120% more organic clicks per impression than brands not cited. This is proof that you need to have a solid SEO and GEO strategy.
Transactional Searches Still Matter
There’s also been a lot of discussion in the SEO community around whether transactional searches would become harder to win organically once AI Overviews came into play. Seer International’s data suggest this may not be entirely the case. It found that transactional queries featuring AI Overviews and a tracked brand citation doubled organic CTR from 0.7% in January 2025 to 1.7% by December 2025. This means that appearing within AI-generated results can still support your performance, even on searches with commercial intent.
What Brands Should Focus on Now
One thing the report makes very clear is that lower search visibility isn’t a total crisis that brands can’t overcome. Comparison and question-based searches now trigger AI Overviews at significantly higher rates:
- Over 95% for comparison queries
- More than 85% for question-based searches
This changes how you need to approach your content. Rather than optimising primarily for rankings, you now need to focus on optimising for citations, authority and retrieval inside AI-generated answers, as GEO and SEO are now overlapping more closely together. A few areas we believe are becoming more important now include:
- Creating genuinely useful comparison content
- Structuring pages around clear questions and answers
- Building topical ownership and credibility signals into your content
- Tracking impressions and visibility separately from CTR alone
The Final Word
There’s no denying that AI Overviews are now playing a significant role in how people interact with search, but the latest data shows that the long-term impact may be more nuanced than many SEOs initially thought. Organic clicks haven’t dropped off entirely, but the way users engage with content is changing. For brands, this is an opportunity to reconsider what visibility means in an AI-driven search environment. Being cited and surfaced in AI-generated answers is becoming significantly valuable alongside traditional rankings.
If you’re looking to adapt your SEO and GEO strategy around authority and retrieval, our team can help you achieve better performance as search continues to change. Get in touch, and let’s get your strategy ready for visibility.