In September 2025, Seer Interactive tracked 25.1 million search impressions across 42 organizations. The finding: pages ranking below a Google AI Overview lost 61% of their organic clicks, and 68% of their paid clicks.

If your firm's practice-area pages or FAQ content show up under one of those AI-generated summaries, you're already feeling this. You just haven't seen the number yet.

The Numbers Are Worse Than You Think (And Getting Slightly Better)

The Drop, In Plain Terms

Seer's study measured 3,119 informational queries from June 2024 to September 2025. Organic click-through rate fell from 1.76% to 0.61% once an AI Overview appeared. Paid CTR fell from 19.7% to 6.34%.

Ahrefs ran its own independent check in late 2025, comparing 300,000 keywords before and after AI Overviews rolled out. Its number: a 58% lower average click-through rate for the #1 organic result when an AI Overview is present — up from 34.5% just eight months earlier. Position two loses about half its clicks. Even position ten drops nearly 20%.

Two different firms, two different methods, landing in the same range. This isn't a fluke.

Why Legal Search Gets Hit Hardest

AI Overviews trigger most often on informational and comparison queries — "do I need a lawyer for a car accident," "how much does a divorce cost in Tennessee," "personal injury vs. workers' comp." That's exactly the research phase where prospective clients decide who to call.

If Google's AI answers that question before someone reaches your site, you've lost the click at the moment it mattered most.

The Early 2026 Signal

There's a wrinkle worth knowing. AI Overview click-through rate itself climbed from 1.3% in December 2025 to 2.4% in February 2026, per Seer's continued tracking. Seer is careful to call this a leveling-off, not a recovery — two months isn't a trend.

But it tells you something useful: people are reading and clicking from inside AI answers, not just skimming and leaving. Winning a citation inside that answer is worth more than it was a year ago.

Why Ranking #1 Isn't the Goal Anymore

The New Prize: Getting Cited

Seer's data shows brands cited inside an AI Overview earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than uncited pages on that same results page. Ranking first no longer guarantees visibility. Being the source the AI quotes does.

What the AI Actually Pulls From

AI Overviews lean on structured, machine-readable content and clear authority signals — not raw ranking position. That means the technical layer of your site (how clearly it labels who you are, what you practice, and where you're located) matters as much as your content.

The GEO Checklist for 2026

Structured Data Isn't Optional Anymore

Google's own structured data documentation lays out how LocalBusiness-type markup should be implemented. For a firm, that means LegalService, Attorney/Person, and FAQPage schema on every practice-area and attorney page. Without it, you're asking the AI to guess.

Write for Direct Answers

Lead each page with a plain-language answer to the question people are actually asking, then support it. Bullet points, FAQs near the top, and clear definitions get pulled into AI answers more often than dense paragraphs of marketing copy.

Original Commentary Beats Generic Copy

AI systems favor content that says something specific — your actual case experience, your take on a local statute, a number you can back up. Boilerplate practice-area descriptions that every firm's site has don't get cited because there's nothing to cite.

Local Signals Still Carry Real Weight

The 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, reported by BrightLocal, tracked AI-search visibility as a ranking category for the first time. Google Business Profile signals (32%), reviews (20%), and on-page SEO (19%) remain the heaviest-weighted factors — and they now double as inputs to whether AI systems trust and cite you. This isn't a choice between traditional SEO and GEO. It's the same foundation.

What to Do This Week

Add schema markup. Start with LegalService, Attorney, and FAQPage on your top five pages by traffic.
Rewrite for direct answers. Put the plain-language answer in the first two sentences of each practice-area page.
Audit your Google Business Profile and reviews. These now feed both local rank and AI visibility.
Run the test. Ask ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, and Perplexity your top three client questions for your city and practice area. Are you cited? If not, note which competitor is.
Track citations, not just rankings. Rank position tells you less than it used to. Whether you're the quoted source is the number that matters now.

The Bottom Line

The firms treating this as a 2027 problem are going to spend a lot more catching up than the firms who fix their schema and content this quarter. The data and the fix are both available right now — most firms just haven't looked yet.

Want to know exactly where your site stands? Contact us for a free audit, and we'll show you what's costing you clicks — and what to fix first.

Google's AI Overviews Are Eating Law Firm Search Traffic — Here's the Fix