Vendor reportAhrefs, 17 Apr 2025

Ahrefs expects AI Overview CTR to decline further as user novelty wears off

Channel validation

Reader Note:: Author's forward-looking opinion, not based on new data in this study.
Evidence:: Expert judgment
Vendor interest:: Moderate — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: 300,000 keywords pulled from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer database: 150,000 keywords that trigger an AI Overview and 150,000 similar informational-intent keywords without an AI Overview. Click-through rate data came from aggregated Google Search Console data (desktop) for each keyword, compared between March 2024 and March 2025.

Good for

Hearing how someone who knows the field reads it, and deciding what to check yourself.

Not for

Anything that needs a measurement. Nobody counted or tested this.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.

4.4x

How much better an AI search visitor converts compared to an organic search visitor, on average

of Google searches that showed an AI summary ended with a click on a link inside that summary (US, March 2025)

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Share of each generation who discover new brands via influencer endorsements
Generation	Share who discover brands through influencers (%)
Gen Z	20%
Millennials	17%
Gen X	12%
Baby Boomers	5%

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11.4%

of shopper sessions in the US involved an AI tool as of June 2026, up 2.3 percentage points from a year earlier

is the short-term ROI index for influencer campaigns in the UK, right on the market average with 4.5% of short-term sales (excluding campaigns that produced no result)

21–26%

of consumers in the US, UK, and Germany report using AI tools to research products online, per Statista's 2026 Global Survey (Jul 2025–Jun 2026).

Ahrefs expects AI Overview CTR to decline further as user novelty wears off

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