Search decoupling
The pattern where search impressions hold steady while clicks decline, because AI answers resolve the question without the user visiting a site.
For most of search history, impressions and clicks moved together. Rankings improved, traffic followed. Generative answers break that link: the query still fires, your page is still retrieved, and the reader gets what they needed without a visit.
The reporting consequence is what makes this hard to spot internally. Rankings look stable. Impressions look stable. Traffic and pipeline soften. A marketing lead reviewing a rank tracker sees nothing wrong, which is why the decline usually gets attributed to seasonality or channel mix before anyone suspects the answer layer.
Decoupling is a shape, not a fixed number. Anyone quoting you a precise industry-wide percentage should be asked for the sample.
Volexi lines Search Console impressions and clicks up against measured AI visibility on one chart, so the divergence is visible rather than inferred.