France Experiences Significant Click-Through Rate Decline Following AI Overviews Rollout

On July 22, 2026, France became the latest major search market to integrate Google’s AI Overviews, a significant development that has provided an unprecedented opportunity to analyze its impact on website traffic. Unlike previous rollouts where AI Overviews were often introduced alongside other algorithmic changes, the French launch offered a clear before-and-after scenario. A study tracking 963 domains in Google Search Console for 28 days prior to and nine days after the implementation revealed a substantial decrease in click-through rates (CTR) for websites exposed to AI Overviews.

Xibeijia Guan, a data scientist at Ahrefs, analyzed the data for French websites, highlighting that less than a month after their introduction, Google’s AI Overviews are already making a significant dent in the click-through rates of French domains. The findings indicate that domains with the highest exposure to AI Overviews experienced a drop of over 20% in their click-through rates within a mere nine days, while those with minimal exposure saw little to no change. This stark contrast strongly suggests that the observed decline is directly attributable to AI Overviews rather than a general algorithm update or seasonal fluctuations.

The study revealed that across all monitored domains, the overall click-through rate fell by 3.4% in the nine-day period following the AI Overview launch. However, for domains with the highest exposure to AI Overviews, the CTR plummeted by an alarming 23.1%, which is six times the overall average. This impact is not isolated to a small number of websites; 82.2% of highly exposed domains witnessed a decline in their CTR, indicating that avoiding negative consequences at this level of exposure has become the exception rather than the rule.

To estimate potential losses, a consistent relationship was observed between AI Overview exposure and CTR decline. For every additional point of AI Overview exposure, websites experienced a roughly one-point decrease in their click-through rate. This linear correlation suggests that if a website’s queries trigger an AI Overview 15% of the time, it can anticipate a loss of approximately 15% in its click-through rate. While this is a simplified model, it provides actionable insights by allowing website owners to use their exposure rate from tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer to estimate the magnitude of potential traffic loss. It is important to note that this correlation is a risk factor, not a definitive prediction, as other factors can influence a website’s performance.

A key observation from the French market is the decoupling of impressions and clicks. While pages continue to appear in search results with the same or even increased frequency, they are being clicked on less often. This pattern mirrors findings from a global study conducted in late 2025, where AI Overviews were found not to remove content from search results but to render it redundant within them. In some extreme cases within the French study, a website experienced a 183% increase in impressions but a 1.9% decrease in clicks, effectively reducing its CTR by more than threefold.

Across the entire French market studied, the median CTR decline was 5.7%, with a corresponding 8.8% drop in clicks. However, this median figure masks a more severe distribution of losses. Nearly half of the websites experienced a loss of over 10% of their daily clicks, and one in twenty lost as much as 50% of their clicks within the nine-day period. The exposure to AI Overviews is expected to continue rising, as the median AI Overview rate among the studied domains is currently 5.4%, with 29% already exceeding 10%. These figures have consistently trended upwards in every market where AI Overviews have been implemented since 2024. Notably, French domains (.fr) in the panel lost 12.3% of their clicks at the median, indicating they are more exposed than international competitors operating within the same French search market.

The health sector emerged as the most severely impacted. Health-related queries exhibit the highest AI Overview rate at 22.2%, and consequently, the sector saw a 20.4% decline in click-through rates. This is attributed to the nature of health queries, which are predominantly informational and often have concise answers that fit neatly within an AI Overview, satisfying user intent without requiring a click-through to a website. The study emphasizes that the intent behind a query is a more significant determinant of impact than the industry vertical. Queries that can be answered with a single paragraph are at higher risk of being absorbed by AI Overviews, whereas queries requiring tools, account access, pricing information, or nuanced human opinions tend to fare better.

The long-term implications suggest that the impact of AI Overviews is likely to worsen. Global research tracking this phenomenon over two years shows that the effect on position one click-through rates has grown from a 34.5% decline in spring 2025 to 58% by the end of 2025. This trend does not appear to diminish over time; instead, it intensifies as AI Overviews become more prevalent and users become accustomed to receiving answers directly from the search results. There is no indication that France will deviate from this trajectory, and further analysis over a longer period is planned to assess the full extent of the impact.

The methodology employed in the study involved tracking a panel of 963 French domains in Google Search Console for a period before and after the AI Overviews rollout on July 22, 2026. The reported 23.1% median CTR decline for highly exposed domains is the raw observed change. When accounting for a concurrent 2.3% CTR increase in the control group (sites with minimal AI Overview exposure), the adjusted CTR decline attributable to AI Overviews for highly exposed sites is estimated at 24.8%.

In conclusion, two weeks after the introduction of AI Overviews in France, highly exposed websites experienced a significant reduction in their click-through rates, while less exposed sites remained largely unaffected. The linear relationship between exposure and CTR loss provides a measurable risk factor for website owners. The study underscores the importance of focusing on click-through rate rather than impressions, as impressions have not declined. The observed magnitudes of impact align with reports from other sources, indicating a widespread trend towards zero-click searches. France’s integration into this trend signals a significant shift in the digital search landscape.