Full Answer

The mechanism is straightforward: when Google generates an AI Overview, it pulls a synthesised answer from multiple sources and displays it above the traditional blue links. Users get what they need without scrolling, so fewer click through. Research from Ahrefs and Amsive measured the drop across thousands of queries and found position-one listings lost the most — up to 58% of their previous CTR. Pages ranked second through fifth saw declines in the 27–40% range, meaning the impact is not limited to the top spot.

Similarweb's analysis reinforced the scale of the shift, showing that 83% of searches where an AI Overview appeared resulted in zero clicks to any website. That figure matters because AI Overviews now trigger on a significant and growing share of commercial and informational queries — not just niche or long-tail topics. For WooCommerce stores relying on product-comparison or how-to content to drive organic visits, the traffic loss is real and measurable.

The practical response is structural, not tactical. Pages built with JSON-LD schema markup, answer-first formatting, and clearly attributed data points give AI engines quotable, verifiable content. Cited pages still receive traffic even when the Overview satisfies most users — the citation link becomes the new front door. The stores treating content structure as infrastructure rather than an afterthought are the ones still earning clicks in a zero-click search landscape.