Shocking 56% CTR drop: AI Overviews gut MailOnline’s search traffic

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Red alert traffic AI

Even when it ranks in Position 1, MailOnline loses over half its clicks when AI Overviews appear in Google’s search results.

Calling the click-through rate (CTR) “pretty shocking” Carly Steven, SEO and editorial ecommerce director for the UK newspaper, told the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress (as reported by PressGazette):

  • “On desktop, when we are ranking number one in organic search, it [clickthrough] effectively is about 13% on desktop and about 20% on mobile. When we are still ranking number one organically but there is an AI Overview present, that drops to less than 5% on desktop and 7% on mobile, so a pretty profound change in clickthrough.”

Why we care. Google’s AI Overviews are dramatically impacting the amount of organic traffic sent to websites and reshaping how searchers get answers. Now, people can get answers without ever leaving Google. The question, then, is: will this kill the business model of the web (as Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince suggested)?

By the numbers. Steven shared internal data showing that for keywords where MailOnline ranks first:

  • Desktop CTR falls from about 13% to less than 5% when an AI Overview appears.
  • Mobile CTR drops from about 20% to 7% due to AI Overviews.
  • In the “best possible scenario” – when Mail is cited in the AI Overview – the CTR is still 43.9% lower on desktop and 32.5% lower on mobile.

Steven also shared an example of how an AI Overview obliterated MailOnline’s traffic for the query [Noor Alfallah news]:

  • “We were ranking number one in Google for it… it wasn’t driving loads of traffic for us but it drove about 6,000 clicks. [An] AI Overview appeared and it went down to 100. So the impact on clickthrough rate is really dramatic.”

But wait. Google’s AI Mode could make this even worse, Steven warned. AI Mode isn’t the default Google Search experience now, but that could change:

  • “…If that does become the default experience then I think referral traffic from Google is definitely in trouble.”

She showed a sample AI Mode result about a missing teenager full of detailed information, with links.

  • “I don’t think anyone is going to be clicking on those links. It just answers it.”

What Google is saying. Separately, Google vice president of news partnerships Jaffer Zaidi reiterated Google’s line that AI Overviews

Google VP of news partnerships Jaffer Zaidi countered that AI Overviews aren’t triggered for hard news queries and that the search features lead to better publisher value (which we’ve heard before – see x, y, and z).

Steven disagreed with Google:

  • “I don’t think the data proves that out,” Steven said.

Branded search. Steven urged publishers to lean into branded searches and unreplicable content, such as columnists and live blogs:

  • “Focusing on the brand has never, ever, ever been more important.”

Terms like [Meghan Markle Daily Mail] and [Prince Harry Daily Mail] remain resilient, she said:

  • “They actively want to read stories about the royals but only on our website.”

The bigger picture. MailOnline’s traffic is down 19.5% year-over-year.

  • “Search traffic is going to decline, I think that’s inevitable… I think this ‘news is immune from AI’ is only going to last so long,” Steven said.

Dig deeper. Google Search traffic decline is inevitable, execs say