How to measure AI Overview click loss in Search Console and GA4 (non-technical)

Compare the last three months with the same three months last year, page by page, and look for pages where position and impressions held but clicks fell.

1. Open Search Console and pick your site. In the left menu click Performance, then Search results.
2. Above the chart, click the Date filter. Choose the Compare tab, then Compare last 3 months year over year. Click Apply.
3. Check the Search type filter says Web. It usually does by default.
4. Tick all four boxes above the chart: Total clicks, Total impressions, Average CTR and Average position. You want all four in the table.
5. Below the chart, click the Pages tab. You now see one row per page, with this year and last year side by side.
6. Click the Clicks Difference column heading so the biggest falls come to the top.
7. For each page near the top, read across. The tell is this: average position is within about one place of last year, impressions are flat or up, and clicks are down 20% or more. That page is still being shown and still ranks; fewer people are clicking through. Something on the results page, very often an AI Overview, is answering the question before they reach you.
8. A page where position also dropped is a different problem (a ranking loss), and a page where impressions also fell may just be a topic people are searching for less. Keep those separate in your notes.
9. Click Export at the top right and choose Google Sheets. Keep the file; it is the start of your monthly record.

One note on a newer report. Since 3 June 2026 a subset of sites, UK sites first, can see an AI Overviews and AI Mode view in Search Console. It shows impressions only. Clicks, click-through rate and position are never separated out for AI Overviews, so the comparison above is still the way to see the effect on your traffic (Google Search Central, June 2026; see also Google’s AI features and your website, which confirms that AI Overview traffic sits inside the Web search type).

In GA4, look at the Landing page report filtered to Google organic traffic, and read the conversions column as well as sessions.

1. Open GA4 and pick your property. In the left menu click Reports, then Engagement, then Landing page.
2. At the top of the report click Add filter (or Add comparison if you would rather see all traffic alongside). Choose the dimension Session source / medium and the value google / organic. Apply.
3. Top right, click the date range. Set the last three full months, tick Compare and choose the same period last year. Apply.
4. Read two columns for each landing page: Sessions (visits) and Key events(GA4’s name for conversions, such as an enquiry form sent or a phone number tapped). If your key events are not set up, ask whoever built the site to mark the enquiry form submission as one; without it, GA4 can only tell you about visits.
5. Cross-check with Search Console. A page that lost clicks in Search Console should show fewer Google organic sessions here. If it does not, check that the page URL matches exactly (trailing slashes and www. can split a page in two).
6. For the month on month view, change the date range to the last 12 months and click the small chart icon above the table to switch to a line chart. One line per landing page shows the shape of the drop.

Check monthly on the same day, keep one row per important page plus one for your brand name, and judge by three-month trends.

1. Pick a day, say the first working day of the month, and put it in the diary. Thirty minutes is enough once the sheet exists.
2. In your spreadsheet, keep one row per important page per month. Ten to fifteen pages is plenty: your best explainers, your comparison and pricing pages, and your main service pages.
3. Add one extra row each month for searches on your company name.
4. Fill each row from Search Console and GA4 as above, and the enquiries column from your form or CRM.
5. Look at the last three months together, not one month against the last. Google turns AI Overview coverage up and down from month to month, so a single month can mislead. Decide on a three-month trend and treat a single month as a note.

A simple template, one row per page per month:

• Month
• Page (the URL)
• Impressions (Search Console)
• Clicks (Search Console)
• Average position (Search Console)
• Google organic sessions (GA4)
• Enquiries attributed to this page (GA4 key events, or your own count)
• Notes (anything you changed on the page that month)

Plus one row for the brand: month, impressions and clicks for searches containing your company name, and total enquiries that month from your form or CRM.