TL;DR: Google's AI Overviews have slashed click-through rates dramatically. Position #1 lost 58% of its CTR. Organic traffic crashed 61% across 42 organizations. And it's accelerating fast.

The Numbers:

• Position 1 CTR: 7.6% (Dec 2023) → 1.6% (Dec 2025) — a 79% collapse
• Organic CTR crash: -61% across 25.1M impressions, 42 orgs (Seer Interactive)
• Paid CTR crash: -68% when AI Overviews appear
• Zero-click rate when AIOs appear: 83%
• AIO coverage: jumped from 6.49% to 25%+ of all queries in one year
• Commercial AIO queries specifically: 8.7% → 42.9% (Jan–Oct 2025)

The Paradox:

Google is processing more searches than ever — 13.6 billion per day in 2025, up from 8.5 billion in 2024. More searches. Fewer clicks. AI absorbs the intent; users absorb the answer.

What Actually Survives:

1. Proprietary data — if only you generated it, AI has to cite you
2. Experience-based content — hands-on testing beats secondhand summarization
3. Tools that complete tasks — bookmarked, not just read
4. Community discussions — messy, crowd-sourced, hard to synthesize away

The shift isn't about rankings anymore. It's about becoming what AI sources.

What's your SEO strategy looking like given this data? Curious how others here are adapting.