Ahrefs Confirms AI Overviews Eat Top Organic Clicks. Rankings Still Matter. Attention Does Not.
Ahrefs research shows Google's AI Overviews substantially reduce click-through rates for the top organic search result. The old playbook of publish, optimize, rank, and earn traffic no longer guarantees attention because AI summaries can satisfy users before they ever reach the source website. Jay Sen, CEO of JV Capital and a four-time founder with two exits, argues businesses must expand SEO rather than abandon it entirely.
This illustrates what economists call disintermediation of the content producer. The mechanism is value extraction without compensation: AI systems synthesize information from source websites, present it directly, and capture the user's attention before the original creator gets a single visit. The mental model you need now is not 'how do I rank first' but 'how do I become the source AI systems quote when they answer.' Those are fundamentally different optimization problems.
Jay Sen, CEO of JV Capital and a four-time founder with two exits, is articulating this shift for business leaders. Ahrefs, the SEO research platform, provides the underlying click-through rate data.
- Search Google for a question related to your field or business and check whether an AI Overview appears at the top of the results. Note whether it cites any source links.
- Rewrite your question to be more specific or niche and search again. Observe whether the AI Overview still appears or whether traditional links dominate.
- Visit the AI Overview's cited sources, if any, and compare their content structure to pages that rank organically below. You will start to see what makes a source quotable versus merely rankable.