Ahrefs December 2025 re-run (published February 4, 2026) — for every 100 clicks you could historically earn for a top-ranking page, Google now keeps 58 (up from 34.5% click loss in April 2025)

Claim: Ahrefs' April 2025 study of 300,000 keywords found AI Overviews "reduced clicks to top-ranking content by 34.5%." Its December 2025 re-run (published February 4, 2026) found the figure had worsened to 58% — "for every 100 clicks you could historically earn for a top-ranking page, Google now keeps 58" (Ryan Law, Ahrefs).

Source: Ahrefs, April 2025 + February 4, 2026.

Confidence: Single-source (one SEO vendor) but trend (worsening, not stabilising) is directionally consistent with Pew Research (July 22, 2025) — real-browsing field study of 900 US adults / 68,879 March 2025 searches: clicks to traditional results 8% with an AI summary vs 15% without; only 1% clicked a link inside the AI summary and Seer Interactive (September 2025) — 3,119 informational queries across 42 organisations / 25.1M organic impressions (June 2024 → Sep 2025): organic CTR fell 61% (1.76% → 0.61%), paid CTR fell 68% (19.7% → 6.34%).

Why this matters for Candid: Useful as the freshest single citation in the brief (early 2026). The trajectory matters more than the exact number — losses are getting bigger, not stabilising.