Paid search grew
while search shrank.

The consensus position on AI in search is that it is a subtraction. The answer arrives at the top of the page, the user's question is resolved, and the click that used to follow does not happen. Publishers have the receipts: organic click-through on queries carrying an AI Overview has fallen roughly 61%, from about 1.76% to 0.61%.¹ Field experiments have put publisher click losses in the region of 40%.

AI Overviews now appear on approximately 48% of tracked queries, up from 31% a year earlier.² Nearly half of search has an answer sitting above the results.

Against that, the Q1 2026 paid search data reads like a different market entirely. Google paid search clicks grew 14% year over year - the strongest click growth in nearly two years, and by some measures a five-year high - with average CPC flat.³ Text ads grew clicks 11%. Shopping grew clicks 18%.

Half of search is being answered before the results load, and advertisers bought 14% more clicks than a year ago at the same price.

Both statements are supported. The reconciliation is not that one dataset is wrong - it is that the answer layer is doing something quite specific to the page, and it is not doing the same thing to paid as it is to organic.

What is actually happening to paid click-through

The most useful evidence comes from Seer Interactive, which has tracked paid and organic click-through segmented by AI Overview presence across 2025 and into 2026. Their Q1 2026 update contains the finding that reframes the whole discussion.

Paid CTR on queries where an AI Overview appears rose from 14.6% to 16.2%. Over the same period, paid CTR on queries without an AI Overview fell from 26% to 21.8%.¹

The two curves are converging, and they are converging from opposite directions. AI Overview queries are becoming better for paid. Non-AI Overview queries are becoming worse for paid.

Figure 01

Paid click-through rate, by AI Overview presence

Movement into Q1 2026. The gap narrows from 11.4 points to 5.6 points.

Source: Seer Interactive, April 2026 update. Paid CTR on AI Overview queries has stayed within a consistent 13–16% band across 2025 and into 2026. Line slopes are drawn to the two reported endpoints; the path between them is not measured and should not be read as linear.

The most plausible mechanism

An AI Overview occupies the top of the results page and pushes the traditional organic listings down. The paid unit generally sits above or immediately adjacent to the answer block.

The effect is that on an AI Overview query, the ad is no longer competing for attention with ten organic results. It is competing with one answer - and it is frequently the first clickable commercial option on the page. Organic listings, which used to absorb the majority of clicks, have been displaced below a large content block that satisfies many informational intents outright.

Organic loses badly in that arrangement. Paid loses much less, and on the evidence above, gains slightly.

The decline in paid CTR on non-AI Overview queries is harder to explain and we will not pretend otherwise. One possibility is query-mix: as Google extends AI Overviews to more informational queries, the residual non-AIO set becomes proportionally more navigational and transactional, where user behaviour differs. That is a hypothesis consistent with the direction, not a finding.

The finding that changes budget structure

The second Seer result is the one with operational consequences, and it has had comparatively little attention.

Brands cited inside an AI Overview receive 35% more organic clicks - and 91% more paid clicks.¹

On informational queries specifically, a cited brand averaged 15.74% paid CTR against 11.19% when the brand was not cited in the Overview.

Take that caveat seriously, because it is doing real work. Nobody has randomised citation status. The brands that get cited are, on average, the brands with better content, more third-party coverage and stronger brand recognition - and every one of those factors lifts paid CTR on its own.

But even under the most conservative reading, something important follows. Citation status and paid performance move together. Whether the citation causes the clicks or merely marks the brands that were going to get them, the practical implication for how a marketing budget is organised is the same.

Paid and organic stopped being separable

The traditional division of labour treats paid search and organic search as substitutes managed by different people against different targets. Paid buys clicks now. Organic earns clicks later. They share keywords and little else.

That division assumed the two channels occupied separate real estate on the page. In an AI Overview result they do not. The Overview draws from organic-style sources and sits directly above the paid unit, and the presence of your brand in one is associated with a materially different outcome in the other.

Under those conditions, an organic content investment has a measurable paid return, and a paid budget is partially determined by an organic asset. Reporting them separately, to separate owners, on separate targets, will produce a specific and predictable error: it will underfund the work that improves both.

The brand CPC puzzle

One further Q1 2026 figure sits oddly and deserves flagging even though we cannot explain it confidently.

Brand keyword CPCs declined 9% year over year while overall paid search clicks grew 14%.³ Brand terms getting cheaper during a period of rising search volume is not the default expectation.

Several mechanisms could produce it. More brand query volume would increase auction supply and soften prices. Competitors reducing conquesting bids on brand terms would do the same. An AI Overview that answers a brand question directly - opening hours, returns policy, specifications - might reduce clicks on the most competitive brand queries while leaving cheaper long-tail brand traffic in the mix, dragging the average down.

We flag it because it is a real number moving in an unintuitive direction and because it is measurable in any individual account within a week. If your brand CPCs fell in Q1, the diagnostic question is whether your brand impression volume rose at the same time. If it did, you are looking at supply. If it did not, something changed about which brand queries are reaching the auction at all.

Three channels, one budget line

The structural point underneath all of this is that Google is now serving three distinct channels for the same query - classic Search, AI Overviews, and Gemini/AI Mode - each ranking pages, citing sources and converting users differently.²

Most paid search reporting still treats "Google Search" as one destination. It is not, and the differences are not cosmetic:

• Classic search results - the environment every paid search benchmark was built in. Ten organic listings, ads above and below, click behaviour well understood.
• AI Overview results - answer block on top, organic pushed down, paid relatively more prominent, citation status coupled to paid CTR.
• AI Mode / Gemini - a conversational channel with different citation behaviour again, and the least public data of the three.

An account-level CPC or CTR average now blends three environments with materially different mechanics. That average will move for reasons that have nothing to do with anything the advertiser did - specifically, it will move as Google changes the proportion of queries served by each channel.

What to do about it

Segment paid reporting by AI Overview presence. This is now the single most informative cut available in paid search, and blended reporting hides it entirely. If your tooling cannot segment by AIO presence, that is the capability gap to close this quarter - not a new bidding strategy.

Treat citation status as a paid media asset. Whether the 91% figure is causal or correlational, the brands appearing in AI Overviews are performing materially better in the paid auction on the same queries. Knowing which of your commercial queries return an Overview, and whether you appear in it, is now a paid search input rather than an SEO curiosity.

Stop reporting paid and organic to separate owners against separate targets. The page no longer separates them. A structure that does will systematically underfund whichever investment improves both - and on current evidence that is content and citation-worthiness rather than bids.

Re-baseline benchmarks by channel. Any CTR or CPC benchmark predating widespread AI Overviews describes a page layout that now applies to roughly half of queries. Comparing this quarter's blended CTR to a 2023 benchmark is comparing two different products.

Check your brand CPC against your brand impression volume. A one-week diagnostic that will tell you whether the 9% brand CPC decline in the sample is happening in your account, and if so which mechanism is producing it.