Impressions Up, Clicks Down: Is AI Search Taking Your Clicks?

You open Search Console for your Warrington dental practice and the two lines have split. Impressions climb steadily. Clicks sit flat, or slide. Same site, same pages, opposite directions.

That pattern, impressions up clicks down, is now one of the most common shapes in search. SEOs call it “the great decoupling”, a term credited to Darwin Santos. The usual suspect is Google’s AI Overviews and the rise of zero click searches. Sometimes that is right. Often there is a duller explanation sitting underneath.

This guide covers what the pattern means, what the click-through research really shows (including the caveats most agencies leave out), why local businesses are less exposed, and how to check your own data for free. If your rankings have fallen too, that is a different problem, and our guide to diagnosing an organic traffic drop is the better place to start.

What Impressions Up, Clicks Down Actually Means in Search Console

An impression does not mean anyone looked at you.

Search Console counts an impression whenever your page appears in a set of results the searcher loaded. Click-through rate (CTR) is clicks divided by impressions. When impressions climb and clicks stay flat, CTR falls, and CTR is the number to watch.

AI Overviews make this harder to read, because of how Google counts them. Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is reported inside the normal “Web” search type and included in your overall figures (Google Search Central, updated 10 December 2025). Three counting rules matter:

• All the links inside an AI Overview share a single position (John Mueller, Google, via Search Engine Journal).
• If the same page appears in the AI Overview and as an ordinary blue link on one results page, that is one impression, not two. Ahrefs floated a “double counting” theory and later withdrew it in an editor’s note.
• An AI Overview impression counts even if the searcher never scrolls down to it.

Google’s Martin Splitt said as much in June 2025 (as reported by PPC Land): impressions are likely to rise when a site appears in AI features, while clicks stagnate or fall a little.

There is a UK twist. Since 3 June 2026, Google has been rolling out a Search Generative AI performance report to a subset of UK sites first (Search Engine Journal, 3 June 2026). It shows impressions only, and it is a subset of your Web data, so never add the two together. Not having it yet is not a fault with your site.

Rising impressions with falling CTR is consistent with AI Overviews. It is not proof.

Four Reasons Clicks Fall While Impressions Rise (Only One Is AI)

The same Search Console graph can come from four different causes, and only one involves AI. Before blaming Google, rule out the other three.

1. New searches at low positions. Google starts showing your page for extra searches at position 8 to 10, or on page two. Impressions pile up and almost nobody clicks. This is often Google testing you.
2. AI Overviews answering above you. The question gets answered at the top of the page, the impression is counted, and the click never happens.
3. A weak title or description. If a page sits in the top five, earns plenty of impressions and still gets few clicks, and there is no AI Overview on the page, the problem is the snippet. That is a rewrite, not a ranking issue.
4. Loosely relevant searches. Google shows you for queries that do not quite match what you sell. Low clicks are expected and harmless.

Two reporting quirks can also distort the picture:

The September 2025 change. Around 10 to 11 September 2025, Google stopped supporting the &num=100 parameter that rank-tracking tools used to load 100 results at once. Impressions those bots generated stopped being counted, so this change pushed impressions down, mostly on desktop, and made average position look better as deep positions dropped out. In Tyler Gargula’s sample of 319 properties, 87.7% lost Search Console impressions and 77.6% lost unique ranking terms (Search Engine Land; see also NoGood, 14 October 2025). It is a small, non-random sample, but any comparison that crosses that date is distorted.

UK launch dates. AI Overviews reached the UK in August 2024 and AI Mode arrived in late July 2025 (Search Engine Land). A year-on-year comparison that straddles either date will show the shift starting there.

Our recommendation is simple. If your average position has dropped as well, this is not mainly an AI problem. Work through the organic traffic drop guide first.

What the AI Overviews Click-Through Studies Say, and Why They Disagree

Serious researchers have measured AI Overviews CTR and come back with answers ranging from roughly 15% fewer clicks to 58% fewer. Each number is right about something. None of them is a measurement of your site.

Three things explain the spread:

• Different denominators. Position-one CTR, clicks per visit and a whole portfolio of brands are different measurements.
• Selection. AI Overviews mostly land on question searches, which always had lower click-through rates.
• Time. The product kept changing while the studies ran.

Most of these studies are correlational. The exception is Agarwal & Sen, a working paper on SSRN (not peer-reviewed) by researchers at the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon. The Indian School of Business summarises the result as: “AI-generated summaries cut organic clicks by around 39.8%”. Because users were randomly assigned to see or not see AI Overviews, it is the closest thing to cause and effect we have. It is still US desktop data from a two-week window.

Authoritas is the only UK dataset we found. It covers news searches only, not local services, and relies on estimates because Google does not share the underlying data.

Google has directly disputed two of these studies (see the last column). More broadly, Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, wrote on 6 August 2025 that total organic clicks were “relatively stable” year on year (Press Gazette). Google published no figures to support that.

For context on zero click searches more broadly, SparkToro found 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in January to April 2026, using Similarweb data (Search Engine Land). Its method changed from the 2024 study, so the two years are not directly comparable. No equivalent figure exists for UK local services.

The verdict: on informational searches, AI Overviews cost a meaningful share of clicks, somewhere between a third and a half in most of these studies. Only one study is UK data, and it is about news, not plumbers or dentists.

Why Local Businesses Are Less Exposed Than the Headlines Suggest

The searches losing the most clicks are often the ones that never brought you a customer.

Whitespark (US, 12 May 2025) checked 540 searches by hand across Houston, Phoenix and Denver, in six local industries including plumbers, dentists and estate agents. AI Overviews appeared on 15% of local-intent searches but 92% of informational ones. The map pack appeared on 93% of local-intent searches. Estate agents were the outlier, with AI Overviews on up to half of local-intent searches. The author notes the sample is small.

The evidence conflicts, though. Seer Interactive (April 2026, tracked queries for 53 mostly larger brands, market not stated) found AI Overviews on 76.9% of “near me” searches. That is a long way from 15%. The two studies used different samples and labelled intent differently, and neither looked at UK towns. We cannot tell you which one describes your market. You can find out by searching your own top money queries and looking.

Branded searches hold up better. Amsive (US, 2025) found only 4.79% of branded keywords triggered an AI Overview, and CTR on those rose rather than fell.

There is also a blind spot. Calls and direction requests from your Google Business Profile never show up as Search Console clicks. A customer who rings you straight from the map pack is invisible in this report, so check Business Profile Performance alongside it (our local SEO tracking guide shows how).

Picture a Widnes plumber (a hypothetical example). The “how to stop a dripping tap” guide loses clicks to an AI summary. “Emergency plumber Widnes” still shows the map pack, and that is the search that books jobs.

The pattern matters most if your site leans on blog and how-to traffic. It matters least if your enquiries come from service pages and your Business Profile.

How to Check Whether AI Overviews Are Behind Your Click Drop

You do not need a paid tool. Free Search Console, plus 20 minutes, will tell you whether you are looking at AI Overviews, a snippet problem or a ranking drop.

1. Open Performance > Search results and tick all four metrics: clicks, impressions, CTR and average position. Compare the last three months with the same three months a year earlier. Note whether the window crosses mid-September 2025.
2. Check average position. Stable or better with falling CTR points to AI Overviews or weak snippets. Falling position means a ranking problem, so switch to the organic traffic drop guide.
3. Split branded from non-branded. Add a Query filter, choose custom regex, and enter your business name variants (for example smith dental|smithdental). Then flip the filter to exclude them. Branded holding while non-branded falls is the documented AI Overview pattern, not a penalty.
4. Find question searches. Use a regex filter for queries starting with how, what, why, can or does, or for queries of six or more words. See whether the CTR loss concentrates there.
5. Open the Pages tab. Is the loss on blog and how-to pages, or on service and location pages?
6. Search your top five lost-click queries yourself, logged out and ideally on your phone. Is there an AI Overview? Are you cited in it?
7. Check the Generative AI report if your property has it. It shows which pages appear in AI features.
8. Cross-check what pays the bills: enquiries recorded as key events in GA4, phone calls, and Business Profile calls and direction requests.

What your results usually mean:

Search Console only covers Google. For ChatGPT and the other AI tools, our guide to AI visibility tracking covers what you can measure and how.

What to Do If AI Overviews Are Taking Your Clicks

You cannot switch AI Overviews off for searchers. The real question is where to spend your effort instead.

• Change what you measure. Judge informational pages on visibility, and service pages on enquiries, calls and booked jobs. Ahrefs’ own analysis concludes traffic growth no longer tracks business growth.
• Rewrite weak snippets. Top-five pages with low CTR and no AI Overview are the quickest win. Make the title and description say what you do, where, and why someone should pick you.
• Put effort into hire-intent pages. Service and location pages, and your Business Profile, sit on the searches AI Overviews appear on least (on Whitespark’s numbers).
• Aim to be the source the AI Overview cites. Seer found informational CTR of 2.07% when a brand was cited, against 0.94% when it was not. That is correlational, and bigger brands get cited more. Our guide to appearing in Google AI Overviews covers how.

Should you opt out? On 3 June 2026 the UK Competition and Markets Authority ordered Google to let sites opt out of AI Overviews and AI Mode without losing ordinary rankings, with nine months to comply (SiliconANGLE). For most local businesses that is the wrong move. Opting out removes your citation, not the AI answer. The searcher still gets a summary; it just will not cite you.

AI appearances and traffic can grow together. An anonymised Manchester veterinary clinic we work with went from 6 to 165 AI Overview appearances while organic traffic rose 87.3% (August 2026 vs August 2025, tracked in Semrush; see our case studies). That shows the two can coexist. It does not prove AI Overviews added the clicks.

If you would like someone to read your Search Console with you, request a quote or call 07932 237512. Our AI search visibility service covers the rest. Nobody can guarantee rankings or AI mentions.

FAQ

Is AI taking my clicks?

Some, probably, if your position is stable and the loss sits on question and how-to searches. Much less on local searches with intent to hire, where the map pack usually dominates. Run the eight checks in “How to Check Whether AI Overviews Are Behind Your Click Drop” above to see which applies to you.

What percentage of searches are zero-click?

SparkToro put it at 68% of US Google searches in January to April 2026, using Similarweb data. Its 2024 study found 58.5% in the US and 59.7% in the EU, using a different data panel, so the figures are not directly comparable. There is no reliable figure for UK local searches.

Does appearing in an AI Overview count as an impression?

Yes. Search Console counts one impression per results page, even if the searcher never scrolls to the AI Overview. All links inside it share one position, and the same page appearing in the AI Overview and as a blue link counts once.

Why did my Search Console impressions drop in September 2025?

Most likely because Google stopped supporting the &num=100 parameter around 10 to 11 September 2025, so rank-tracking tools could no longer load 100 results at once. Their bot impressions stopped being counted, and average position often looked better as a result. On its own, that is a reporting change, not a loss of rankings or customers.