A pattern Shopify owners keep describing on forums: organic traffic is down, but nothing looks broken. Rankings haven’t moved. Search Console shows the same or more impressions. People just click less.
There are a few possible causes, and you should rule them out. But one of the most common in 2025 and 2026 is that Google now answers the question at the top of the page with an AI Overview, and fewer people scroll down to the results underneath. You still rank. Fewer people get that far.
How big the effect is
Three independent studies, measured different ways, point the same direction:
- Pew Research (2025): people who saw an AI summary clicked a result in 8% of visits, against 15% when there was no summary. They clicked a link inside the summary itself in 1% of visits. Pew ↗
- Ahrefs (February 2026): an AI Overview lowered the click-through rate of the number one result by 58%, comparing December 2023 with December 2025 across 300,000 keywords. Ahrefs ↗
- Seer Interactive (November 2025): organic click-through on queries with an AI Overview fell from 1.76% to 0.61%. Brands cited inside the Overview got 35% more organic clicks than those that weren’t, though Seer notes that’s a correlation. Seer ↗
How to confirm it in Search Console
Search Console doesn’t report AI Overview clicks separately; they’re counted in the normal web results. So you look for the fingerprint instead.
- Open Performance → Search results. Turn on all four metrics: clicks, impressions, CTR and average position.
- Click Date → Compare and compare the last three months with the same three months a year earlier. Using last year avoids mixing in seasonality.
- Open the Queries tab and sort by the click difference. Look for queries where position is flat or better, impressions are flat or up, and clicks are down. That’s the AI Overview fingerprint.
- Search the top ten of those queries yourself in a private window. Note whether an AI Overview appears, and whether your store is mentioned or linked in it.
Rule these out first
- Seasonality. Always compare with the same period last year, not the previous month.
- Tracking changes. A new cookie banner or a broken analytics tag can make traffic look lower in Shopify or GA4 while Search Console clicks are fine. Compare both.
- A few big queries. If one or two queries lost several positions, that’s a ranking problem, not an AI Overview one.
- Site changes. A theme switch, changed URLs or removed collections can lose traffic without anything in the results changing.
- More ads and shopping boxes. Paid listings and product grids push organic results down too. Look at the results page, not only the report.
What to do about it
Get into the answer, not just under it
If the AI Overview cites sources, look at which ones. They’re usually roundups, review sites and forum threads. Getting your store mentioned in two or three of them is what puts you in the answer. In my study of 42 Shopify stores, Gemini almost never named a small store when shoppers asked about the category. It named brands and retailers that get written about everywhere.
Protect the searches that still click
Searches for your brand name and for specific products still send traffic. Make sure your product titles say plainly what the product is, and that your Google Merchant Center feed is connected through Shopify’s Google & YouTube channel, so products can show in Google’s shopping results.
Write content worth citing
Generic “how to choose” posts are exactly what AI Overviews now answer on their own. Content that holds up has something only you can say: your own test results, a real comparison with numbers, sizing data from your returns, a specific fit guide.
Measure whether you’re named
Rankings alone won’t tell you this anymore. Check what the AI actually says for your main questions, and check again after you’ve done the work. Here’s how to do that by hand, or run the free check below.