The Changing Shape of Search: Impressions Rising, Engagement Falling

Reading time: 9 minutes

Over the past year, there’s been a growing focus on how AI-generated summaries - commonly known as AI Overviews - are changing the shape of Google’s search results. Rolled out more widely throughout 2024, these summaries aim to deliver quick, concise answers directly on the results page. As a result, the industry has seen a clear increase in what are often referred to as zero-click searches: where users get the information they need without ever leaving Google.

Much of the early analysis around this trend has come from the US, with several large-scale studies pointing to a consistent pattern: rising impressions paired with falling click-through rates.

For those of us managing websites in Australia and New Zealand, the natural question is - are we seeing the same kind of impact locally?

To explore this, I reviewed performance data across a small sample of client websites. Part of that analysis looks at year-on-year trends to help understand how zero-click features may be shaping visibility and engagement over time.

I also took a closer look at what happened before and after Google’s most recent core algorithm update in March 2025. This article brings those findings together, to highlight patterns, prompt discussion, and help inform the conversations many of us are now having with stakeholders.

 

Three Key Takeaways:

• Visibility Up, Click-Through Rates Down: Following Google’s March 2025 Core Update, most websites analysed experienced meaningful shifts in visibility, particularly in year-on-year comparisons. While impressions increased significantly for the majority (up between 25%-83%), click volumes did not follow suit, with many sites seeing clicks decline or remain relatively unchanged. The clearest trend across all websites was a notable decrease in click-through rates (CTR), dropping sharply by up to 50% year-on-year. This points to a widening gap between content appearing more frequently in search results and users choosing to click through to visit websites.
• AI Overviews and Zero-Click Features Are Reshaping Search Behaviour: AI-generated summaries and other zero-click features (such as featured snippets, knowledge panels, and direct answers) are increasingly satisfying search queries without requiring users to visit websites. These features are becoming more prevalent, especially at the top of search results, and are contributing to declining CTR across organic listings, even when content is ranking well.
• SEO Measurement Needs a Broader Perspective: Traditional metrics like impressions and CTR are no longer reliable indicators of SEO success in isolation. As search behaviour evolves, it's important to consider wider engagement signals such as content quality, on-site interaction, and how effectively content answers user questions. Shifting focus towards visibility, authority, and content utility (rather than pure traffic volume) can lead to more meaningful outcomes and better-informed stakeholder conversations.

 

Table of Contents:

• Google's Core Updates
• What the Data Revealed
  • High-Visibility Websites (more than 100,000 monthly impressions)
  • Lower-Visibility Websites (less than 100,000 monthly impressions)
  • Comparing Core Updates: March 2024 vs March 2025
  • Year-on-Year Trends: Gains in Visibility, Declines in Interaction
  • Final Thoughts: Clear Shifts in CTR and User Behaviour
• How My Findings Compare with International Data
  • Why This Matters: Changing Assumptions About SEO Growth
• Understanding Zero-Click Features in Google Search
• Shifting Perspective and Conversations with Stakeholders
• Appendix: Website Data Overview
  • Metric Definitions
  • Approach and Limitations
  • Performance Summary

 

Google's Core Updates

Before diving into the data, it’s worth stepping back to briefly explain what a core update actually is. Google periodically releases core updates to refine how its algorithms assess content quality, relevance, and trustworthiness. These updates aim to surface the most useful content in response to user queries, even if that means reshuffling existing rankings. While the specifics are never fully disclosed, the general intent is to reward genuinely helpful content and better align results with what users are looking for (Google Search Central, 2025).

From my experience, these updates can lead to noticeable shifts in how a site performs - some pages may gain visibility, while others see declines as Google recalibrates what it values in its results. Changes to visibility do not always correlate to the quality of content; these updates often change how content is presented in the search results, such as the type of SERP features it includes.

In March 2024, Google released one of its most significant core updates in the past several years. Rolled out over 45 days from 5th March to 19th April 2024, this update involved widespread changes to multiple core systems and incorporated the helpful content system directly into the core algorithm. Alongside improvements to spam policies, Google reported a 45% reduction in low-quality and unoriginal content in search results. The update specifically addressed the rise of thin or AI-generated content designed for search engines rather than people. A separate spam update also ran during this period.

The March 2025 core update, which rolled out between 13th March and 27th March 2025, was the first major algorithm change of this year. Designed to enhance the relevance and helpfulness of search results across all regions and languages, it aimed to further refine how Google evaluates content quality.

Following the March 2025 update, BrightEdge data reported by Search Engine Land (April 2025) highlighted a small but noteworthy change: AI Overviews began citing top-ranking organic pages slightly less often, with citation overlap dropping from 16% to 15%. This suggests that AI-generated summaries may now be pulling from a wider pool of sources, including pages outside the top ten, potentially opening the door to more impressions for a broader range of websites.

 

What the Data Revealed

To better understand how the March 2025 Core Update affected organic search performance, I analysed Google Search Console data from ten websites; five with over 100,000 monthly impressions (typically national or international), and five with fewer (generally national or local). I compared performance before and after the update (February to April 2025), and also reviewed year-on-year trends to factor in seasonality. The findings reflect average performance across each group, highlighting where meaningful changes occurred and where figures remained within normal variation (±10%). Skip to Apendix for more information.

 

 

High-Visibility Websites

For websites receiving more than 100,000 monthly impressions, impressions and clicks changed only slightly following the update. The more notable shift came in click-through rate (CTR).

• Visibility (Impressions): Impressions increased by 9.88% from February to April 2025, a marginal change, just under our ±10% threshold. In the same period the year before, the increase was 5.46%, which also falls within normal variation and may reflect seasonal uplift. Year-on-year, however, impressions rose significantly: up 25.32% in February and 34.10% in April. These are meaningful visibility gains.
• Engagement (Clicks): Click volume declined by 4.77% between February and April 2025, a relatively unchanged result. By contrast, the same period in 2024 saw a 3.37% increase. Year-on-year, clicks rose by 11.17% in February but only 0.66% in April, largely unaffected despite much higher visibility.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR declined by 13.95% post-update, compared to just a 1.87% drop during the same period in 2024. That’s a more pronounced difference. Year-on-year, CTR was down 3.99% in February and 15.90% in April, marking a clear reduction in the rate of user interaction with these search listings.

 

Lower-Visibility Websites

Websites with fewer than 100,000 monthly impressions followed a similar trajectory but with even sharper contrasts, especially when comparing year-on-year data.

• Visibility (Impressions): Impressions increased by 7.75% post-update, within normal variation, so not a significant shift in isolation. April 2024, by contrast, had seen a larger 23.58% increase following that year’s update. Year-on-year, however, the 2025 gains were substantial: up 83.38% in February and 58.25% in April.
• Engagement (Clicks): Clicks fell by 7.02% between February and April 2025, a marginal change. But compared with 2024, this drop becomes more significant: clicks were down 16.47% in February and 24.31% in April year-on-year, despite large visibility gains.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR declined by 14.43% post-update, similar to the 16.08% drop seen in the same period in 2024. However, the year-on-year drops were far more severe, down 52.93% in February and 51.14% in April. These are substantial declines in how often users are clicking on results.

 

Comparing Core Updates: March 2024 vs March 2025

When we compare the proportion of websites affected after each March Core Update, the 2025 data shows a more noticeable shift:

• Visibility (Impressions): In 2024, 60% of websites remained within normal variation (±10%) post-update. In 2025, that dropped to 30%, meaning 70% of sites experienced a significant shift in visibility, either up or down.
• Engagement (Clicks): In 2024, 80% of websites showed marginal or no change in click volume. In 2025, this fell to 30%, with 40% of websites seeing a drop of more than 10%.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): In 2024, 80% of websites had a CTR change within normal variation. By contrast, in 2025, only 40% remained in that range, while 60% experienced a significant decline.

This suggests that while the March 2024 update was less disruptive, the 2025 update led to broader shifts, particularly in how often users clicked on search results after seeing them.

 

Year-on-Year Trends: Gains in Visibility, Declines in Interaction

Comparing year-on-year performance reveals that visibility is improving across all sites, but click behaviour is not following the same upward trend.

• High-impression websites saw strong visibility growth: up 25.32% in February and 34.10% in April 2025 compared to the same months in 2024. Clicks rose 11.17% in February, but only 0.66% in April. CTR declined 3.99% in February and dropped further by 15.90% in April.
• Lower-impression websites experienced even greater visibility growth year-on-year—up 83.38% in February and 58.25% in April. However, their click volume declined: down 16.47% in February and 24.31% in April. CTR saw the steepest drop of all, down over 50% in both months.

These findings highlight a growing disconnect between being visible in search results and attracting actual traffic from them.

 

Final Thoughts: Clear Shifts in CTR and User Behaviour

Looking at averages alone, the March 2025 Core Update may not seem extreme; average changes in impressions and clicks across the dataset remained within ±10%. However, when we zoom in at the individual site level, the picture changes:

• 70% of websites saw significant change in impressions.
• 70% experienced more than a ±10% shift in click volume.
• And 60% recorded a substantial drop in CTR.

The most consistent pattern across both high- and low-impression websites was a reduction in click-through rate. In some cases, the year-on-year drop exceeded 50%, despite strong visibility gains. This suggests that while websites may be surfacing more frequently in Google Search, fewer users are clicking through.

 

How My Findings Compare with International Data

The trends I observed in my own data closely reflect patterns identified in international studies. In particular, the relationship between increased visibility and decreased engagement appears consistent across regions.

According to BrightEdge data reported by Search Engine Land (May 2025), Google search impressions rose by 49% year-on-year, while click-through rates (CTR) declined by 30%. These shifts have been widely attributed to the growing influence of AI Overviews that now appear in millions of daily search results.

Further research from Ahrefs and Amsive reported by Search Engine Land (April 2025) also confirms this pattern. In their analysis of hundreds of thousands of search results, both organisations found that traditional organic listings experienced a measurable drop in CTR when AI Overviews were present. Ahrefs, for example, reported a 34.5% decrease in clicks for first-position results.

These studies support what I’ve seen across the sites I manage: impressions may rise following changes to how search results are presented, but this doesn’t always translate into more traffic.

 

Why This Matters: Changing Assumptions About SEO Growth

Traditionally, it was expected that when impressions increased, especially for new queries, clicks would gradually follow. The thinking went like this: as your content began to surface for more searches, your average position might initially be low, but as relevance signals improved, rankings would rise, and so would clicks. In time, this would result in a stronger click-through rate.

But that expectation no longer aligns with the data.

The analysis revealed that impressions are rising significantly without a corresponding increase in clicks. In many cases, clicks have declined, and CTR has dropped sharply. This suggests that visibility gains may now reflect surface-level exposure within the SERP, rather than meaningful engagement from users.

The increasing presence of zero-click features which satisfy queries directly in the results, is reducing the need for users to click through. As a result, the relationship between visibility and traffic is becoming increasingly complex.

 

Understanding Zero-Click Features in Google Search

AI Overviews are just one example of what’s often referred to as a “zero-click” search experience. A zero-click result occurs when a user finds the information they’re looking for directly within the search engine results page (SERP) and doesn’t need to click through to a website.

Recent analysis from SparkToro, reported by Search Engine Journal (March 2025), found that nearly 60% of all Google searches ended without a click. This behaviour is becoming increasingly common as Google expands its use of rich SERP features designed to deliver quick answers.

Zero-click search results can take several forms, including:

• Featured Snippets: Short extracts that answer a query directly, often appearing at the top of the page.
• Knowledge Panels: Information boxes that summarise well-known topics, such as people, places, or organisations.
• People Also Ask: Expandable dropdowns with commonly related questions and brief answers.
• Local Packs: Map-based listings showing business details, locations, and contact information.
• Direct Answers: Simple factual responses (e.g. conversions, dates, weather).
• Calculators and Tools: Built-in tools like calculators, currency converters, and timers.
• Definitions: Dictionary-style entries for word meanings and usage.
• AI Overviews: Automatically generated summaries that consolidate information from multiple sources into a single panel at the top of the results page.

These features are designed to serve users quickly and efficiently, and as you can see from the image (above) they are increasingly covering the first screen ("above the fold") of the search engine results. In this example, AI Overviews, Featured Snippets and People Also Ask capture the first three "positions".

This presents a growing challenge for SEO professionals and businesses that rely on organic traffic. Even when content is surfaced more often, or organic positions improve in the listings below, users may no longer see it - or need to click through to engage with it.

 

Shifting Perspective and Conversations with Stakeholders

These insights show us that traditional ways of measuring SEO success need reconsidering. Seeing a rise in impressions alongside falling clicks doesn't mean my SEO efforts - or yours - are failing. Rather, it's simply an indication that what success looks like is evolving.

While my own approach to SEO already takes a broader, more holistic view (focusing on the full user journey rather than just rankings), these recent shifts reinforce the need for others to do the same. For those seeing changes in search performance, it may be time to look beyond traditional metrics (like positions and clicks) and start paying closer attention to wider engagement indicators. That includes how long users spend on-site, how well content holds attention, and how effectively organic visits lead to meaningful interactions or outcomes.

It’s also worth placing greater emphasis on creating content that directly answers user questions in a clear, conversational, and genuinely helpful way, making it more likely to be featured in AI-driven summaries. Structuring content with care, optimising for featured snippets and knowledge panels, and making use of schema markup are all part of this evolving landscape. While it may not generate traffic, it will certainly help with brand awareness.

And it doesn’t stop with Google. With more people discovering content through platforms like Reddit, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, as well as AI-engines, visibility across these channels is becoming increasingly relevant to a well-rounded strategy.

When it comes to communicating these shifts to stakeholders and shareholders, my advice is straightforward: focus conversations on the changing nature of user behaviour and the importance of quality engagement over rankings and sheer traffic volume. Highlight the opportunity to be seen as an authoritative resource, even if it means fewer immediate clicks.

The evolving landscape isn't cause for alarm - rather, it’s a natural progression. The value from SEO remains strong, even if traditional metrics change.

It's a shift in perspective, but one that with clear communication and adjusting strategies thoughtfully, we can confidently navigate and thrive in this new era of SEO.

 

Appendix: Website Data Overview

To examine the effects of the March 2025 core update, I reviewed performance data from ten websites. Each represents a business headquartered in Australia or New Zealand, though most operate internationally. For privacy reasons, the domains are not named.

I extracted and compared Google Search Console data from four points in time: February 2024, April 2024, February 2025, and April 2025. Because 2024 was a leap year, February’s figures were adjusted to a 28-day average to ensure fair comparison across years. From this dataset, I extracted three key metrics: impressions, clicks, and click-through rate (CTR).

 

Metric Definitions

• Impressions reflect how often a page from a website appears in Google’s search results, regardless of whether a user clicks.
• Clicks refer to how many times users selected a result to visit the website.
• Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that led to clicks. For example, 100 clicks from 1,000 impressions would result in a CTR of 10%.

 

Approach and Limitations

No filters were applied to the data (e.g. by region, device type, or branded queries). This broader view helps illustrate overall shifts in organic performance across different audience segments. That said, large datasets in Search Console can be subject to sampling, so some variability is expected. Even so, the results offer a helpful snapshot of real-world performance trends across a mix of sites with varied visibility levels.

 

Performance Summary

For each website, I tracked percentage changes in impressions, clicks, and CTR from February to April 2025 (pre- and post-update), and compared these to the same periods in 2024. I also reviewed year-on-year changes to highlight how visibility and engagement have evolved over time.

In many cases, visibility (impressions) improved markedly in 2025, particularly in April, following the core update. However, those increases were often accompanied by flat or declining clicks and falling click-through rates. This pattern appeared across websites targeting Local, National and International audiences, although the scale of change varied. For some, the drop in CTR was modest. For others, it was steep, pointing to a more significant shift in user behaviour or how content is being presented within search results.

The full website-by-website breakdown follows, showing individual averages and comparisons across key periods.