Why Your Google Ads Click-Through Rate Dropped in 2025 — And What's Different in 2026

If you've been running Google Ads and noticed your click-through rates declining through 2025 — and that the decline accelerated sharply in July — you're not looking at an underperforming campaign. You're looking at a structural change in how Google search works that affects every advertiser on the platform. Paid CTR on queries with AI Overviews dropped from 19.7% to 6.34% between June 2024 and September 2025 — a 68% collapse. And even on queries without AI Overviews, paid CTR still fell 20%. This post gives you the specific diagnosis, the data behind it, and the concrete adjustments that New York businesses need to make right now.