AI Overviews Minimize CTR by 23.1% in France

Which implies that, for as soon as, we acquired to look at the earlier than and after with out having to guess. In most markets, AI Overviews crept in alongside algorithm updates and seasonal swings, and all of us spent the next 12 months arguing about how a lot that they had actually value us. France had a launch date, and we have been already monitoring: 963 domains in Google Search Console, over the 28 days earlier than the launch and the 9 days after it.

Xibeijia Guan, our knowledge scientist, pulled and analysed the info for French websites (we clarify how within the methodology on the finish of this research). Lower than a month after launch, Google’s AI Overviews are already consuming into click-through charges in France.

The domains most uncovered to AI Overviews misplaced greater than a fifth of their click-through fee in 9 days. Those barely uncovered hardly moved in any respect.

So this is not an algorithm replace. It is AI Overviews.

Throughout the domains we studied, click-through fee fell 3.4% in 9 days.

For the domains most uncovered to AI Overviews, it fell 23.1%. Six instances as a lot.

And this is not a handful of unfortunate websites dragging the common down: 82.2% of extremely uncovered domains misplaced CTR. At that degree of publicity, getting away with it has develop into the exception.

In between these two extremes, the connection holds fairly regular. When you evaluate the change in CTR towards every area’s AI Overview fee throughout all 963 domains, you get a slope of −0.9.

In different phrases: each additional level of AI Overview publicity prices you roughly one level of click-through fee.

If 15% of your queries set off an AI Overview, count on to lose someplace round 15% of your CTR. It is crude, however it’s actionable: pull your publicity fee from Website Explorer and you’ve got your order of magnitude.

Barely anybody misplaced rankings in late July. Pages nonetheless present up, simply as typically as earlier than, generally extra.

They simply get clicked much less.

It is the identical sample we present in the worldwide research we ran in late 2025, and the identical form as the good decoupling: an AI Overview would not take away you from the SERP, it makes you redundant inside it. Essentially the most excessive case in our French panel had +183% impressions for −1.9% clicks, which divides its CTR by greater than three.

One caveat: that −23.1% describes a minority of websites. Throughout the complete panel, the median is −5.7% CTR and −8.8% clicks.

However that reassuring median hides a brutal distribution.

Nearly one web site in two misplaced greater than 10% of its each day clicks. One in twenty misplaced half. In 9 days.

And publicity will virtually actually preserve climbing. At this time the median AI Overview fee among the many domains we studied is 5.4%, and 29% of them are already above 10%. These numbers have solely gone a method in each market since 2024.

One sector stands clearly aside. Well being has an AI Overview fee of 22.2%, the very best within the research, and its click-through fee fell 20.4%.

Well being queries are informational, they’ve quick solutions, and there isn’t any transaction ready on the finish. That is precisely what an AI Overview absorbs finest: the reply matches contained in the field, and the person leaves with what they got here for.

What decides your destiny is not your vertical, it is the intent behind your queries. A question {that a} single paragraph can reply is a question you are going to lose. A question that wants a instrument, an account, a value, a purchase order or a human opinion holds up much better.

Have a look at your key phrases by that lens earlier than you have a look at your trade.

That −23.1% might be not the worst of it.

Our world analysis tracked the identical impact over two years: the influence of AI Overviews on place 1 click-through fee went from −34.5% in spring 2025 to −58% by the top of 2025. It would not fade with time, it will get worse, as AI Overviews set off on extra queries and customers get used to not clicking.

Nothing suggests France escapes that trajectory. We’ll re-run this evaluation over an extended window to see how far it goes.

The −23.1% median CTR determine is the uncooked noticed change for the extremely uncovered group, with no management adjustment. Over the identical interval, the management group’s CTR rose 2.3%. So extremely uncovered websites did not simply fall 23%: additionally they missed the small elevate everybody else loved. When you account for that, the actual impact of AI Overviews is −24.8%.

Two weeks after AI Overviews arrived in France, probably the most uncovered websites had misplaced a fifth of their click-through fee. The least uncovered felt nothing in any respect. In between, the connection is linear: roughly one level of CTR per level of publicity.

Three issues to remove.

One. Your threat is measurable, and it is measurable earlier than the injury is finished. The SERP options filter in Website Explorer offers you your share of queries with an AI Overview.

Two. Cease steering by impressions. They did not drop. Click on-through fee is what took the hit.

Three. These orders of magnitude line up with what others have measured: Seer Interactive experiences natural CTR declines of 49.4% to 65.2%, Kevin Indig greater than 50%, Authoritas 47.5%. No person is measuring the other.

Search goes zero-click, and France has simply joined the motion.