SEO isn’t dying, but most of Google’s page one is
At least, that’s what our data seems to suggest.
We looked at 10.4M clicks and 54M impressions across 419 Quebec-based SME websites over 16 months, then compared our current post-AI Overviews click distribution with pre-AIO CTR benchmarks.
A few years ago, ranking around positions 5-8 could still feel like a decent SEO win. You were on page one, visible enough, and usually getting at least some traffic from it.
But with AI Overviews, ads, local packs and everything else taking more space in the SERP, weak page-one rankings are getting weaker (nothing new).
But like, by a lot.
Our data shows that positions 4-10 have lost around 70% of their click share compared to pre-AIO benchmarks.
That means they went from capturing around 30-45% of page-one clicks to 10.8% (post-AIO).
Barely 1 out of 10 clicks. Crazy.
The pattern was pretty blunt:
- The Top 3 now captured 89.2% of all page-one organic clicks
- Position #1 alone captured 63.6%
- Position #7 averaged a 2.6% CTR
- Positions 4-10 captured 10.8% of page-one clicks, compared to around 30-45% before AI Overviews
So no, people didn’t stop clicking organic results.
But they seem to click much less deeply into the page.
“We rank on page one” might not mean much anymore if the ranking sits below the first few results and barely drives traffic.
Curious how other SEOs are handling this.
With the Top 3 becoming the “new page one”, and holistic search taking up more space (AI answers, social platforms, forums, blogs, reviews, branded search, etc.), how are you adjusting keyword prioritization?
When a keyword seems capped around positions 4-8, do you keep pushing for the Top 3, or move effort toward long-tail keywords (even tho they sometimes drive less traffic)?
And what signals do you use to decide when a ranking is still worth chasing?