Hi everyone, this is Neo.

Ever had this experience —

You open Google Search Console, watch your CTR on queries with AI Overviews “plummet” by 60% or more, and instantly your palms go sweaty. Your gut reaction: That’s it — AI is stealing my traffic. I need to rethink my content strategy right now!

But hold on.

Seer Interactive recently published an analysis report covering 53 brands and 5.47 million queries, and it uncovered a surprising fact:

On pages where brands were cited in AI Overviews, CTR did fall 61% from Q3 to Q4. But actual clicks during the same period barely moved.

This is a major “data trap.” Plenty of independent site owners are making wrong decisions right now because they’re misreading their data.

Today I’ll break down this report piece by piece — and more importantly, teach you how to read your own data correctly in the AI search era.

What’s really behind the “61% CTR crash”?

Let’s lay out Seer’s core numbers first:

| Month | AI Overviews impressions | Clicks | CTR |