Traditional SEO reporting assumes the search journey starts with rankings and ends with clicks. AI Overviews invert that: many users see a generated answer before they evaluate the results list — and some never click at all for informational queries.
For eye surgery searches, this changes patient behaviour in three ways:
- Pre-click trust formation: the summary frames what “good” looks like.
- Shortlisting: patients often move from “what is X?” to “where should I go?” faster.
- Authority bias: entities repeatedly referenced across topics feel safer.
That’s why a clinic can see organic clicks rise even when average position appears stable: AI surfaces expand reach and pre-qualify patients, while classic ranking metrics struggle to reflect the full pathway.
The data on AI Overviews’ impact on click-through behaviour is now substantial. Studies using datasets of 300,000+ keywords found that AI Overviews initially reduced position-one click-through rates by 34.5% in April 2025 [1], worsening to a 58% reduction by December 2025 [2]. Independent research corroborates this pattern: Pew analysis found users encountering AI summaries were significantly less likely to click through to websites [3].
There’s also a safety dimension. Recent reporting has highlighted concerns about inaccurate or context-poor health summaries in AI Overviews, and the need for reliable, professionally reviewed information [4]. Google’s own Quality Rater Guidelines emphasise the importance of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness for health content, particularly highlighting the need for content created by or reviewed by qualified professionals [5].
In practice, this increases the value of sources that demonstrate clinical governance and consistency across written and video content. When AI systems generate summaries about eye surgery risks, lens options, or recovery timelines, they preferentially surface content that is clinically accurate, appropriately cautious, and corroborated across multiple high-quality sources.
The new competitive edge is not “gaming the SERP.” It’s being the clinic that repeatedly provides the best explanation — with sensible caveats — so both patients and AI systems can trust what they’re seeing. That means treating patient education content as seriously as clinical information: authorship transparency, fact-checking by qualified professionals, and consistent messaging across all patient touchpoints.
References
[1] Ahrefs. (2025, April 16). AI Overviews reduce clicks by 34.5%. https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks/
[2] Ahrefs. (2026, February 4). Update: AI Overviews reduce clicks by 58%. https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/
[3] Pew Research Center. (2025, July 22). Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in search results. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-search-results/
[4] Search Engine Land. (2026, January 2). Google AI Overviews are hurting click-through rates. https://searchengineland.com/google-ai-overviews-hurt-click-through-rates-454428
[5] Google. (2025). Search Quality Rater Guidelines. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf
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