Homepage clicks fell at 74 percent of sites in a 110-site sample

Eighty-one of 110 homepages lost organic clicks between Q3 2025 and Q3 2026, a 74 percent share. The typical site lost 21 percent. Jenny Lee Lynch of Previsible, an SEO agency, published the analysis as a contributor piece in Search Engine Land on November 4. It is one agency’s sample of 110 sites, not a census of the web.

The spread of the losses is the useful part. The middle half of sites landed between -37 percent and +3 percent, and only 15 homepages, 14 percent, were cut by 50 percent or worse. Lynch argues that site-specific trouble, such as a botched migration, a penalty, or lost rankings, would produce a few severe drops. Declines at nearly three of every four sites point to a change in how people search, not to a set of broken sites.

Industry made a large difference. SaaS fared worst, with 21 of 25 homepages down and a typical loss of 35 percent. Education and information sites matched that 84 percent share of decliners but at a median of -21 percent, across 19 sites. Ecommerce, with 34 sites, posted -18 percent. Finance, with 14, came in at -11 percent, and logistics, with 10, at -21 percent. Healthcare, at -3 percent, rests on only eight sites, which Lynch says should be read as directional (a caution that applies to every row of the table).

Lynch offers a mechanism for the SaaS result. Those homepages often target broad category terms such as “project management software,” where searchers compare vendors and results pages now open with machine-written roundups and ranked lists. For informational queries, she cites Seer Interactive data showing AI Overviews on 36 percent of them, against 8 percent of commercial and 5 percent of transactional queries.

The entry point for AI features has also shifted. At 63 of the 110 sites, 57 percent, a page other than the homepage drew the largest impression count from Google’s AI features. Sites where the homepage led that visibility had a median click change of -20 percent, and sites led by a deeper page had -22 percent. Lynch notes the comparison looks at whole sites rather than individual queries, and says leading in AI visibility was not tied to a meaningful reduction in homepage declines.

Branded search is where she expects pressure next. Searches now carry modifiers such as “[Brand] pricing” or “[Brand] reviews.” One SaaS property in the data sent its three biggest landing pages for modifier searches to pricing pages, which together pulled over 8,000 clicks, and the homepage missed the top 10. Across 10 sites, branded queries supplied an average of 79.6 percent of homepage clicks in Q3. DemandSphere data showed AI Overviews on over 80 percent of the branded searches it tracks by late September, from about 26 percent at the month’s start. Ahrefs reported 82.91 percent by September 29. Because those jumps arrived late in the quarter, Q3 numbers barely capture them.

The method carries limits worth knowing. Lynch used medians and excluded impressions, citing Google dropping the &num=100 parameter and a logging error that over-reported impressions from May 13, 2025. Across all 110 homepages, total clicks fell 16 percent, versus 7 percent with the four largest sites removed, so a few large properties weigh heavily on aggregate figures. Semrush owns Search Engine Land, and the outlet says it did not ask the contributor to mention Semrush.

The analytical point for search teams is about reporting design. A homepage line in a dashboard now mixes real brand weakness with a structural change in where clicks land, and the two cannot be separated from that one chart. Lynch recommends branded clicks across the whole domain using the branded filter in Search Console, GA4 direct visits, and conversions from organic sessions on every landing page.

Before the Q4 report goes to a client or executive, rebuild the headline metric at domain level and track branded clicks weekly. If homepage clicks fall further while branded clicks hold, the brand is not shrinking; the entry point has moved.

Based on a contributor article by Jenny Lee Lynch of Previsible, published in Search Engine Land on November 4, 2026.