It’s a real phenomenon where search impressions and clicks, which moved roughly in tandem for many years, have started diverging rather abruptly and dramatically. It is an obvious qualitative change in Google search traffic.
Everyone is blaming the AI overviews, and they seem like the most obvious culprit. But regardless, the change in pattern is real and not correlated with site content quality.
I don't know what the hell is going on over there, but the systemic issues and awful decisions I see coming out of Alphabet companies in recent years paints a picture of suicidal levels of hubris at the c-suite level. The boards need to pull their heads out of their asses, otherwise incompetence is going to sink that ship before 2040.
[1] - https://jackyan.com/blog/2023/09/google-search-is-worse-by-d...