Recently, many marketers have noticed record brand search impression volumes and declining CTRs. Before shifting strategy or raising alarms, consider: the numbers may not reflect real user behavior or demand. New changes like expanded AI Overviews and double serving have fundamentally altered what those numbers mean.
Here’s what’s really happening…
The Combined Impact of AI Overviews and Double Serving
Starting in spring 2025, AI Overviews began appearing in more search results, delivering direct answers and reducing the need for users to click through. Soon after, Google updated its double serving policy, permitting advertisers to display ads in multiple positions on a single results page. This is particularly interesting when it comes to brand queries.
At LQ Digital, we’re using our proprietary LQ Vision tool to track how these changes are impacting our client’s search campaigns. Using LQ Vision, we were able to track how AI Overviews increased significantly in March, appearing in searches where they previously did not exist. Shortly after, Google quietly enabled double serving, announcing it a little later toward the end of March, and by early May, we were seeing almost 100% double serving rates on exact match brand keywords.
What does this mean?
- Paid search impressions climbed rapidly, while organic search, as measured in Search Console, remained flat or dropped
- At first glance: it looks like demand is exploding and CTR is collapsing, but in reality, it’s the reporting mechanics that haven’t caught up
The Math Behind the Mirage
Let’s break down what’s actually happening with a simplified example:
Before Double Serving:
- 1,000 brand searches per day
- 1 ad shown per search = 1,000 impressions
- 100 clicks = 10% CTR
After Double Serving:
- Same 1,000 brand searches per day
- 2 ads shown per search = 2,000 impressions
- Still 100 clicks (same user intent) = 5% CTR
Key insight: Impression count doubled, not because of more demand, but because your ads can now appear in more than one spot per search.
Avoid Strategic Overreaction
Many marketers are responding to this perceived performance change: either by celebrating the increased impressions and wanting more, or by going into firedrill mode due to plunging CTRs. In fact, such moves risk optimizing against “phantom” problems. The right approach is to pause, check the numbers, and validate the context:
- Did brand impressions surge right after these Google changes?
- Is actual search volume or conversions moving at the same rate?
- Are organic brand impressions in Search Console steady, while paid spikes?
If the answer is yes, you’re observing how ad policy and AI shifts affect your dashboards, not true demand or ad effectiveness.
Validate What You’re Seeing
Before making significant campaign changes, consider these steps:
- Review impression timelines for major spikes in spring 2025, often correlating with double serving updates
- Compare paid and organic brand impressions side by side using Search Console data
- Analyze if click volume and business outcomes (conversions, revenue) track with impression growth
- Cross-reference timeline correlation with March/April 2025 double serving ad policy change
If clicks and business results remain steady while impressions skyrocket, you’ve found measurement inflation, not an urgent performance issue.
Strategic Takeaways
- Recognize that familiar metrics like CTR and impression share now require new context in the changing SERP of the AI era
- Refocus on business outcomes, conversions, revenue, customer impact, instead of channel-specific vanity metrics
- Keep communication open with teams and stakeholders to prevent unnecessary strategic pivots based on misleading data
- See measurement complexity as a call for smarter analysis and better cross-channel understanding, not a crisis
Conclusion
Your brand search campaigns likely aren’t broken,the measurement environment is simply more complex. Understanding why reports look different, rather than trying to “fix” numbers in isolation, is key to remaining strategic and effective as the search landscape evolves.
The real question is not whether your numbers are falling, but whether you know why, and whether you’re focusing on the right signals in a time of rapid change.
