France: 23.1% Fewer Clicks on Websites Highly Exposed to AI Overviews

Ahrefs measures a marked decline in organic clicks in France as AI Overviews frequently appear. Highly exposed sites lose a median of 23.1% in click-through rate despite stable positions, while the median for the market declines more moderately. The health sector emerges as the most affected. Other international measures report similar orders of magnitude.

Ahrefs observes a median exposure of 5.4% and plans follow-up

In the sample monitored by Ahrefs, the median rate of AI Overviews reaches 5.4%, with 29% of domains already exceeding 10%. The company plans to relaunch its analysis over a longer window. Globally, Ahrefs observed on 300,000 keywords that the impact of AI Overviews on the click-through rate of position 1 increased from 35% in spring 2025 to 58% by the end of 2025, concluding that the effect intensifies over time. Juliette Bégué emphasizes that other measures yield similar orders of magnitude: Seer Interactive reports declines of 49% to 65%, Kevin Indig exceeds 50%, and Authoritas measures 48%.

At the market level, the median masks heavy losses

Among the 963 domains monitored, the median click-through rate declines by 5.7% and clicks by 8.8%. Highly exposed sites form only a minority of the panel, but the distribution shows marked losses: 48% of domains lose more than 10% of their daily clicks, 19% lose more than 30%, and 5% lose more than half. For .fr domains, the median clicks drop by 12%, which Ahrefs considers an indicator of greater exposure of French sites compared to international players in the market.

High exposure: -23.1% CTR, while the control group progresses

Ahrefs compares domains where more than 20% of queries trigger an AI Overview to a control group exposed to less than 2%. Over the nine days following July 22, the exposed group loses a median of 23.1% in click-through rate, dropping from 2.29% to 1.76%, while the control group gains 2.3%. More broadly, highly exposed domains decline in 82% of cases, while those that rarely see an AI Overview remain unchanged.

Positions nearly unchanged but fewer clicks observed

According to Ahrefs, positions in the search results pages changed little by the end of July, and the frequency of web page appearances remains stable, even increasing. One example from the panel records a 183% increase in impressions while clicks decrease by 1.9%. Juliette Bégué clarifies that the AI Overview does not remove a site from the results page but makes it "useless within."

Ahrefs links intent to impact and clarifies its framework

Health stands out with 22% of AI Overviews and a 20% drop in click-through rate, a situation that Ahrefs attributes to informational queries, with short answers and no transactions, absorbed by the snippet. By November 2025, 43% of health keywords were already triggering a summary globally. To estimate the risk, Ahrefs calculates a slope of -0.9 points of click-through rate per point of exposure, given as a benchmark rather than a prediction, highlighting exceptions at all levels of exposure. 963 of the 1,000 most clicked domains were monitored before and after the deployment on July 22; Ahrefs presents this analysis as the first before-and-after measure in France, following work conducted since May 2024 in other countries.