Anyone else seeing weird CTR swings after the latest Google update?

[mike_donovan]

Been testing a few of my affiliate sites this week and noticed something odd.

A couple pages that held steady for months suddenly dropped in CTR even though average position barely moved. One site in the home improvement niche is still ranking top 3 for a bunch of buyer-intent terms, but clicks are down enough to matter. Another site actually picked up impressions but the click-through is all over the place.

My setup is pretty basic:

– mostly informational + affiliate mix
– some AI-assisted content, but heavily edited
– internal links tightened up last month
– titles/meta tweaked on a few pages
– using GSC + Ahrefs + a couple AI tools for content refreshes

What I’m seeing:
– pages with “best X for Y” style titles are getting hit harder
– some older posts are holding better than newer ones
– SERPs seem more crowded with ads and forum results
– a few pages that used to bring easy affiliate clicks are now just sitting there with impressions

I’m not overthinking it yet, but it feels like Google is testing different result layouts or just changing how it treats certain intent buckets.

I’m curious what others are seeing:
– anyone else noticing CTR drops without big ranking losses?
– are you changing title tags more aggressively now?
– has AI content been holding up for you, or are you seeing more volatility on those pages?
– any quick wins you’ve found for recovering clicks?

For me, the only thing that’s helped a bit is making titles a little more specific and less “SEO-ish.” Stuff like adding year, use case, or a stronger buyer angle seems to help on some pages.

Would be good to compare notes because this one feels more like a CTR problem than a pure ranking problem.

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