--- title: "Impressions Up, Clicks Down: What It Means in 2026" description: AI Overviews cite many sources at one shared position and assistants fire queries no human types. Why Search Console impressions climb as clicks fall — and a 20-minute diagnostic for your own data. image: https://www.marketingmary.ai/hubfs/blog/images/aeo-06-impressions-clicks-divergence-her-hero-1.webp --- [Skip to main content](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/impressions-up-clicks-down#main-content) [![](https://www.marketingmary.ai/hs-fs/hubfs/mm-2026-preview/marketingmary-logo-mark-only.png?width=259&height=155&name=marketingmary-logo-mark-only.png) Marketing Mary](https://www.marketingmary.ai/) - [How it works ▾](https://www.marketingmary.ai/how-it-works) How it works - [OverviewThe whole journey, step by step](https://www.marketingmary.ai/how-it-works) - [PersonasProfiles of your best customers](https://www.marketingmary.ai/personas) - [ArticlesWritten, checked and approved](https://www.marketingmary.ai/content) - [The 90-day planWeek by week, sized to your hours](https://www.marketingmary.ai/90-day-plan) - [How Mary checks her workSources, labels and checks](https://www.marketingmary.ai/methodology) - [Who it’s for ▾](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-small-businesses) Who it’s for - [Small businessesOwners and one-person teams](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-small-businesses) - [Marketing teamsPersonas and content your board can defend](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-marketing-teams) - [AgenciesEvery client in one account](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-agencies) - [Pricing](https://www.marketingmary.ai/pricing) - [Blog](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog) [Join the early-adopter list](https://www.marketingmary.ai/join-our-waitlist) 6 min read # Impressions Up, Clicks Down: What's Really Happening in Search Console (2026) [![Picture of Clwyd Probert](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/ce454bc741a43a0578a9342cd3f99842) Clwyd Probert](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/author/clwyd-probert) : Published September 9, 2026 ![Impressions Up, Clicks Down: What's Really Happening in Search Console (2026)](https://www.marketingmary.ai/hubfs/blog/images/aeo-06-impressions-clicks-divergence-her-hero-1.webp) Our own Search Console tells this story: impressions up 49% in four weeks, clicks down 12% over the same period, average position improving from 11.3 to 8.4. Every number moved the right way except the one that pays. Here is what is actually happening, what Google documents, and how to tell — in your own data — whether you are winning or quietly losing. The short answer Impressions and clicks have come apart because an impression now measures something different from what it measured in 2023. AI Overviews cite **several sources at one shared position**, so more pages get an impression per query than a ten-blue-links page ever produced. AI assistants issue machine-phrased sub-queries during retrieval, which appear in your data as queries no human typed. And when an AI Overview is present, click-through on the top organic result falls by roughly **58%**. The result: Search Console increasingly reports *eligibility to be seen*, not attention. Rising impressions are not automatically good news, and falling CTR is not automatically your fault. ## What Google actually documents Start with the counting rules, because most explanations of this phenomenon skip them. Google's Search Console documentation states that an impression is counted "whenever an item appears in the current page of results, whether or not the item is scrolled into view, as long as the user need not click to see more results." So an impression has never meant a human looked at your listing — it means your link was on the page that loaded. That was true in 2019 and it is true now. Two things about AI Overviews follow directly from Google's own wording. First: "An AI Overview occupies a single position in search results, and all links in the AI Overview are assigned that same position." One position, shared by every cited source. Second, on impressions inside AI Overviews, the documentation is brief to the point of anticlimax: **standard impression rules apply**. There is no special AIO impression rule to learn — which also means there is no documented way to separate AI-driven impressions from ordinary ones in the standard performance report. That single detail — one position, many citations — is the mechanical reason impression counts inflate. A traditional results page gave a handful of sites a top-of-page impression. An AI Overview can cite five, eight, ten sources, and each one banks an impression at the same shared position. More publishers get counted per query. Nobody gets more clicks. 58% lower average CTR for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview is present (Ahrefs, 300,000 keywords, December 2025 data) 1 position shared by every source cited inside an AI Overview, per Google's documentation 0.61% organic CTR on AI-Overview queries, September 2025, down from 1.76% in June 2024 (Seer Interactive) ## The evidence — including the part that complicates the story Ahrefs re-ran its AI Overview study on December 2025 data across 300,000 keywords — 150,000 with an AI Overview present and 150,000 informational keywords without — and found the presence of an AI Overview correlates with a **58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page**. That is the headline most people quote, and it is well-sourced. Seer Interactive's tracking adds something more uncomfortable, and it is the reason to be careful before blaming AI Overviews for everything. On queries *with* an AI Overview, organic CTR fell from 1.76% (June 2024) to a low of 0.57% (July 2025), recovering slightly to 0.61% by September 2025. But on queries with **no AI Overview at all**, CTR went from 2.72% in June 2024 to a peak of 3.14% in February 2025 and then down to 1.62% by September 2025 — roughly halving from its peak. Read that second number again Click-through is falling on pages where no AI Overview appears. Whatever is happening is bigger than one SERP feature — richer results generally, more answers resolved on the page, changed habits. If your diagnosis is "AI Overviews took our clicks", you will optimise for the wrong thing. The honest version is: the click is becoming a scarcer unit across search, and AI Overviews are the most visible accelerant. ## The queries no human typed Here is the part that surprised us most in our own data, and it is the least-documented mechanism in this whole area. When we investigated our worst-converting position band, we pulled every query where we ranked between positions 4 and 10, took the top twenty by impressions, and inspected each live results page. Two findings, both awkward: **Every single inspectable results page carried an AI Overview.** Fourteen out of fourteen. Featured snippets: zero. The snippet slot we spent years learning to win no longer exists on those queries — it has been absorbed. **Six of the twenty queries returned no results page at all.** They were machine-phrased questions — full sentences like "how do i choose an ai marketing workflow tool that actually improves business results?" — one of which had logged 7,134 impressions in 28 days. Near-identical duplicate variants of the same question sat beside them in the data. These are the sub-queries AI assistants generate while assembling an answer, not things people type into a search box. In total, those twenty queries produced 38,685 impressions and **zero clicks**. To be straight about the evidential status: Google documents that follow-up questions asked inside AI Mode are treated as new queries, but we found **no Google documentation confirming or denying** whether the internal sub-queries an AI system issues during retrieval are logged as publisher impressions. Our data is consistent with it. That is an inference from pattern, not a documented mechanism, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing with more confidence than the evidence supports. ## A 20-minute diagnostic for your own data Averages hide all of this. Site-wide CTR blends branded and unbranded, human and machine, AIO and not. Run these four checks instead: | Check | How | What it tells you | | --- | --- | --- | | Band the CTR | Group queries by average position: 1–3, 4–10, 11–20, 21+. Compare CTR per band. | If 4–10 converts no better than 11–20, position is not your problem — the page above the results is. | | Count the sentences | Sort queries by length. Flag anything phrased as a full natural-language question, especially with near-duplicate variants. | Assistant fan-out. High impressions, structurally zero clicks. Excluding these changes your true CTR. | | Inspect the SERP | Take your top 10–20 queries by impressions and look at the live results page in the right market. | Whether an AI Overview sits above you. If it does on most, your ceiling is set by citation, not ranking. | | Split branded | Separate queries containing your brand from those that do not, and track them apart. | Branded search is the demand signal AI answers cannot intercept. If it rises while clicks fall, you are being read and remembered. | Then change what you report. Raw clicks and site-wide CTR are now poor proxies for whether search is working. The measures that survive contact with AI results are **citation share** (does your brand get named in AI answers to the questions you care about — check it by asking them, on a schedule, and logging the results), **branded search volume**, **conversions from organic rather than sessions**, and **impression share on the queries that actually matter to your pipeline**. We track citation share by running the same set of buyer questions through the major assistants roughly every two weeks and recording which sources they name. It is unglamorous and it is the only number in this article that has moved in the direction we wanted all quarter. The strategic read: when answers are assembled rather than listed, being *quotable* beats being ranked. That means structured, liftable answers, real evidence, and a clear position on questions your buyers actually ask. Marketing Mary runs that end to end — research, writing, schema, publishing and verification — and tracks whether the resulting pages get cited, not just where they rank. [See how Marketing Mary works](https://www.marketingmary.ai/join-our-waitlist) ## Frequently asked questions ### Why are my Search Console impressions going up while clicks go down? Three things compound. AI Overviews cite multiple sources at a single shared position, so more pages earn an impression per query than a traditional results page produced. AI assistants generate machine-phrased sub-queries during retrieval that log impressions no human will ever click. And when an AI Overview is present, click-through on the top organic result is around 58% lower. Impressions measure eligibility to be seen; they always did, but the gap between eligibility and attention has widened sharply. ### Does a citation inside an AI Overview count as an impression? Yes. Google's documentation says standard impression rules apply to AI Overviews, and that the AI Overview occupies one position with every link inside it assigned that same position. Note the consequence: your reported "average position" can improve because you are cited in an AI Overview sitting at position 1, while your actual clicks do not move at all. ### Can I separate AI Overview traffic from normal organic in Search Console? Not in the standard performance report — there is no filter that isolates it, which is why so many teams cannot prove what is happening to them. Google has been adding generative-AI reporting, so check your own Search Console for what is currently available on your property rather than relying on any article, including this one, for the state of a fast-moving product. ### Is falling CTR always caused by AI Overviews? No, and this is the most-missed point. Seer Interactive's tracking shows CTR on queries with *no* AI Overview fell from a 3.14% peak in February 2025 to 1.62% by September 2025. Clicks are getting scarcer across search generally. AI Overviews accelerate it; they are not the whole of it. ### Should I stop reporting impressions? Keep them, but stop treating growth in them as a result. Impressions remain useful for spotting new query territory and for tracking whether you are entering retrieval sets at all. Pair them with citation share, branded search and organic conversions, and band your CTR by position rather than reporting one site-wide average. Sources checked against the original documents in September 2026: [Google Search Console performance report documentation](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828) (impression counting; AI Overview position rule) · [Ahrefs, AI Overviews and clicks update](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/) (300,000 keywords, December 2025 data, published February 2026) · [Seer Interactive, AIO impact on Google CTR, September 2025 update](https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-september-2025-update). First-hand figures are from Marketing Mary's own Google Search Console property and live SERP inspection, August–September 2026. Search products change quickly; verify current behaviour in your own account. - [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share) [![What is an evidence-graded buyer persona?](https://www.marketingmary.ai/hubfs/blog/images/evidence-graded-buyer-persona-hero.webp)](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/evidence-graded-buyer-persona) #### [What is an evidence-graded buyer persona?](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/evidence-graded-buyer-persona) [![Picture of Clwyd Probert](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/ce454bc741a43a0578a9342cd3f99842) Clwyd Probert](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/author/clwyd-probert): Sep 30, 2026, 8:25:00 PM An evidence-graded buyer persona is a buyer persona in which every claim carries a label saying where it came from: first-party evidence (the... 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[Read More](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/how-hubspot-breeze-credits-work) ![](https://www.marketingmary.ai/hs-fs/hubfs/mm-2026-preview/marketingmary-logo-mark-only.png?width=259&height=155&name=marketingmary-logo-mark-only.png) Marketing Mary How it works - [Overview](https://www.marketingmary.ai/how-it-works) - [Personas](https://www.marketingmary.ai/personas) - [Articles](https://www.marketingmary.ai/content) - [The 90-day plan](https://www.marketingmary.ai/90-day-plan) - [How Mary checks her work](https://www.marketingmary.ai/methodology) - [Pricing](https://www.marketingmary.ai/pricing) Who it’s for - [Small businesses](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-small-businesses) - [Marketing teams](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-marketing-teams) - [Agencies](https://www.marketingmary.ai/for-agencies) Company - [Blog](https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog) - [Security](https://www.marketingmary.ai/security) - [Privacy](https://www.marketingmary.ai/privacy-policy) - [Terms](https://www.marketingmary.ai/terms-of-service) - [Contact](https://www.marketingmary.ai/contact) © 2026 Marketing Mary Data hosted in the UK (London) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Clwyd Probert", "url" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/author/clwyd-probert" }, "datePublished" : "2026-09-09T22:58:11.000Z", "headline" : "Impressions Up, Clicks Down: What It Means in 2026", "image" : [ "https://www.marketingmary.ai/hubfs/blog/images/aeo-06-impressions-clicks-divergence-her-hero-1.webp" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/impressions-up-clicks-down", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai/hubfs/Logo%20White-1.png" }, "name" : "Marketing Mary" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "Blog", "description" : "Practical guides on AI marketing tools, content automation, buyer personas, and MarTech stack optimisation for UK SME marketing teams.", "inLanguage" : "en-GB", "name" : "Marketing Mary Blog", "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "name" : "Marketing Mary", "url" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai" }, "url" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog" } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "FAQPage", "mainEntity" : [ { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Three things compound. 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The consequence: your reported average position can improve because you are cited in an AI Overview at position 1, while your actual clicks do not move." }, "name" : "Does a citation inside an AI Overview count as an impression?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Not in the standard performance report — there is no filter that isolates AI Overview clicks and impressions from ordinary web results, which is why many teams cannot prove what is happening to them. 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They remain useful for spotting new query territory and for tracking whether you are entering retrieval sets at all. Pair them with citation share in AI answers, branded search volume and organic conversions, and band click-through rate by position group rather than reporting one site-wide average." }, "name" : "Should I stop reporting impressions?" } ] } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement" : [ { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai", "name" : "Home", "position" : 1 }, { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog", "name" : "Blog", "position" : 2 }, { "@type" : "ListItem", "item" : "https://www.marketingmary.ai/blog/impressions-up-clicks-down", "name" : "Impressions Up, Clicks Down", "position" : 3 } ] } ```