AI Overviews are taking the click before the click

Google now answers the question above the results. The traffic you lose first is the traffic that used to warm people up before they bought.

What actually changed

Published industry measurement puts organic click through at roughly 0.61 percent on queries that show an AI Overview, against 1.62 percent on queries that do not. They now appear on around 14 percent of shopping queries and on the large majority of best product searches.

Why it hurts more than the number suggests

The queries that trigger an overview are disproportionately informational and comparison queries. That is the top of your funnel: the buying guides, the how does it work pages, the which one should I choose posts. Those pages rarely converted directly, which is why nobody misses them for a quarter, and then the bottom of the funnel dries up.

The part most people miss

Being cited inside the overview is now its own channel. Brands that appear in the citation list are reported to see materially more organic clicks, and more paid clicks, than uncited competitors on the same query. Visibility inside the answer is starting to matter more than position underneath it.

I check these against the original source before publishing, and I will send you the source if you want to see it. I do not quote a number I have not read myself.