France Experiences Significant Click-Through Rate Decline Post-AI Overviews Implementation

On July 22, 2026, France became the latest major search market to integrate AI Overviews into its Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). This precise launch date provided a unique opportunity to directly observe the impact of the feature on website traffic, unlike previous market rollouts where the introduction of AI Overviews was often blended with other algorithm updates and seasonal fluctuations. A study conducted by Ahrefs tracked 963 domains in Google Search Console for 28 days preceding the launch and nine days following it to quantify the immediate effects.

The analysis, spearheaded by Ahrefs data scientist Xibeijia Guan, revealed a substantial decrease in click-through rates (CTR) for French websites within the first month of AI Overviews’ implementation. Domains most exposed to AI Overviews experienced a drop of over a fifth in their CTR within just nine days. In contrast, domains with minimal exposure saw negligible changes, strongly indicating that the observed decline was a direct consequence of the AI Overview feature itself, rather than a broader algorithmic shift.

Across the entire panel of studied domains, the overall CTR saw a decline of 3.4% in the nine days following the AI Overview launch. However, for domains with the highest exposure to these AI-generated summaries, the CTR plummeted by a staggering 23.1%, which is six times the average decline. This impact was not isolated to a few outlier websites; a significant 82.2% of highly exposed domains reported a loss in CTR, suggesting that avoiding negative consequences from AI Overviews has become the exception rather than the norm for heavily affected sites.

A key finding of the study is the linear relationship between AI Overview exposure and CTR loss. By comparing the change in CTR against each domain’s AI Overview rate across the 963 tracked domains, a slope of -0.9 was established. This suggests that for every one percentage point increase in AI Overview exposure, websites can expect to lose approximately one percentage point of their click-through rate. For instance, if a website’s queries trigger an AI Overview 15% of the time, it can anticipate a roughly 15% reduction in its CTR. This provides a quantifiable metric for businesses to estimate potential traffic losses based on their exposure rates, obtainable through tools like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. It’s important to note that this slope represents a risk factor and not an absolute prediction, as other factors can influence website performance.

The data also highlights a concerning trend of impressions increasing while clicks decrease, a phenomenon referred to as "the great decoupling." Websites are still appearing in search results with the same or even greater frequency, but AI Overviews are making them less necessary for users to click through. This pattern mirrors findings from Ahrefs’ previous global studies on AI Overviews conducted in late 2025. In extreme cases observed in the French market, one domain reported a 183% increase in impressions accompanied by a 1.9% decrease in clicks, effectively dividing its CTR by more than three.

While the most exposed sites experienced a dramatic CTR drop, the median decline across the entire French market was a still significant -5.7% CTR and -8.8% clicks. However, this median figure masks a more severe distribution of losses. Nearly half of the analyzed websites lost over 10% of their daily clicks, and one in twenty experienced a halving of clicks within just nine days. The study also notes that the median AI Overview rate among the studied domains is currently 5.4%, with 29% already exceeding 10%. These numbers have consistently trended upwards in every market where AI Overviews have been introduced since 2024, suggesting the problem is likely to escalate. French domains specifically (.fr) in the Ahrefs panel showed a median click loss of 12.3%, indicating they are more vulnerable than international competitors operating in the same French search market.

The health sector emerged as the most significantly impacted industry. Health-related queries exhibit an AI Overview rate of 22.2%, the highest recorded in the study, and this sector saw its CTR fall by 20.4%. This vulnerability is attributed to the nature of health queries, which are often informational, have concise answers, and typically do not lead to immediate transactional outcomes. AI Overviews are particularly adept at absorbing such information within the search results page itself, satisfying user intent without requiring a click-through. The study emphasizes that query intent, rather than industry vertical, is the primary determinant of a website’s fate. Queries answerable by a single paragraph are at high risk, while those requiring tools, accounts, price comparisons, or nuanced human opinions are proving more resilient.

The long-term outlook suggests that the impact of AI Overviews is likely to worsen. Global research by Ahrefs has shown a trend where the negative impact on the CTR of top-ranking positions has increased over time, rising from -34.5% in spring 2025 to -58% by the end of 2025. This suggests that the effect does not diminish but rather intensifies as AI Overviews become more prevalent and users adapt to not clicking through to websites. There is no indication that France will deviate from this trajectory, and further analysis over a longer period is planned to track this evolving trend.

The methodology for calculating the -23.1% median CTR figure represents the raw observed change for the highly exposed group. A control group experienced a slight CTR increase of 2.3% during the same period. When accounting for this baseline lift, the true impact of AI Overviews on highly exposed sites is estimated to be a more substantial -24.8%.

In conclusion, two weeks after their introduction in France, AI Overviews have demonstrably impacted website traffic, with highly exposed sites losing approximately one-fifth of their click-through rate. The relationship between exposure and loss is linear, with each percentage point of AI Overview presence costing roughly one percentage point of CTR. Three key takeaways are: the risk is measurable and can be assessed proactively; impressions are an unreliable indicator of health, as CTR is the metric suffering; and these observed magnitudes align with findings from other industry analyses, reinforcing the notion that search is increasingly becoming "zero-click," a trend that France has now joined.