Been testing a few of my affiliate sites this week and I’m seeing some odd CTR movement.

One site that’s been sitting pretty stable for months dropped about 18% in clicks even though average position barely moved. Another page actually gained impressions but the CTR tanked. Same titles, same meta, same content. Nothing major changed on my end.

What’s interesting is the pages with more “commercial” intent seem to be getting hit harder than the informational stuff. Could just be noise, but it feels like Google is testing different SERP layouts again.

A couple things I’m checking right now:
– title tag changes vs. current SERP snippets
– whether AI Overviews are pushing organic down further
– if my affiliate pages are getting crowded out by Reddit/Quora results
– query-level CTR differences between desktop and mobile

I’ve also been playing around with title rewrites using a few AI tools, but honestly, most of the “optimized” versions are too polished and don’t sound natural. The titles that seem to work best are still the simple ones with a clear benefit and a number or year in them.

Example:
– “Best X for Y” usually underperforms
– “7 Best X for Y in 2026” tends to pull better clicks if the intent is strong

Not saying that’s a magic bullet, just what I’m seeing on a couple niches.

Curious if anyone else is noticing:
1. CTR drops without ranking drops
2. affiliate pages getting squeezed harder than info content
3. better results from simpler titles vs. AI-generated “SEO” titles

Would be good to compare notes because right now it feels like Google is messing with the click layer more than the rankings themselves.