Seer: Google's CTRs are dropping - AIO is only one reason

Key Takeaways:

A study by Seer Interactive found massive CTR drops from Google comparing September 2025 vs. June 2024
- Paid CTR without AIO dropped by -32%
- Paid CTR with AIO dropped by -68%
- Organic/SEO CTR without AIO dropped by -41%
- Organic/SEO CTR with AIO dropped by -61%
Google proclaims that AIO is a successful feature for users and Google is sending more traffic to the web - data throughout different industries cannot support those claims
Green raises important points:
- It is just not enough to say “clicks are the wrong metric” - even though that’s clearly true, we don’t have the metrics to replace it
- businesses are being forced to renegotiate their relationship with Google - at least in a marketing contex
- Give us the data! - like Solis commented: without data, there is no good way to optimize the user experience
Critical review:
- CTR erosion due to shifts towards Mobile searches
- Differences between industries is not accounted for
- AIO impact especially on informative queries (definitions) vs. transaction oriented queries (ecommerce, comparisons) - however, even for latter ones we are experiences declining CTRs
- Still, the results are in line with my experience of the last 2-3 years of ever declining CTRs - especially for exact same organic ranking positions while Google is making sure to increase it's ad revenue

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