Why Your Law Firm’s SEO Impressions Are Up but Clicks Are Down: The AI Effect Explained

Picture this: your law firm’s website is climbing the search engine results pages (SERPs). You’re seeing a marked increase in impressions, your SEO analytics are humming with rising visibility, yet your click-through rate (CTR) is falling flat. It’s a confounding contradiction that many law firms across the UK are currently experiencing. The culprit? The rapidly evolving capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) in the digital space — especially how search engines now deploy it.

This article will unpack the AI-led transformation of SEO, explain why impressions can rise while clicks diminish, and explore how solicitors and legal marketing teams can strategically navigate this shift to ensure visibility translates into viable client engagement.

Understanding the Impressions vs Clicks Conundrum

SEO impressions refer to how many times your law firm’s website link appears in search engine results for relevant queries. A surge in impressions indicates that your content is being surfaced more frequently by Google or Bing. This sounds like a good sign — and it is, to an extent. But if this increase isn’t matched by a rise in clicks, there’s a deeper issue at play.

Simply put, more people are seeing your content appear, but fewer are clicking through to your site. This metric disconnect is increasingly prevalent in legal search queries. It highlights a major transition in how users are interacting with search engines, driven by new AI-powered features like AI-generated summaries, featured snippets, and predictive search responses.

The Rise of AI-Powered Search

Search engine providers, especially Google with its Search Generative Experience (SGE), are embedding AI-driven features into search results. These tools aim to provide faster, richer answers directly on the search results page, reducing the need for users to click through to a website to find information.

In typical legal searches — for example, “What’s the time limit to make a personal injury claim in the UK?” — searchers may be met with a content-rich box that summarises relevant information scraped and synthesised from websites like yours. AI patterns this summary together, often truncating the user journey before it ever reaches your domain.

How AI Decreases Click Volume Despite High Visibility

Here’s how AI is contributing to higher impressions but reduced click-throughs:

• Answer Boxes and AI Summaries: Your SEO-optimised content is being used to train language models and populate featured snippets or AI boxes, allowing users to extract information without leaving the SERP.
• Voice Search and Zero-Click Results: With the growth in smart devices and AI assistants, users are completing legal information searches vocally, which shifts interactions away from websites and towards AI-generated responses.
• Expanded SERP Features: Maps, FAQs, carousels, and other widgets occupy prime screen estate, pushing traditional organic search links further down the page.

The result is a well-documented trend in user behaviour: queries are increasingly satisfied on the results page itself. This zero-click environment means your site’s hard-won visibility isn’t always converting into traffic – a frustrating scenario for law firm marketers invested in SEO strategies.

Why This Matters Specifically for Law Firms

Legal services sit uniquely at the intersection of high-stakes decision-making and highly specific information searches. Prospective clients aren’t just looking for quick information; they eventually require personalised legal advice. However, their path to making contact is now increasingly fragmented by AI’s interference.

The danger for solicitors is that users wrongly assume basic AI-generated summaries are enough to act on — sometimes misinterpreting generic advice as personalised legal guidance. This not only leads to misinformation risks but undercuts your ability to position yourself as the trusted authority guiding them to proper representation.

Moreover, many law firms invest significantly in content marketing and SEO. When AI shaves away the user’s need to click on your site, the ROI on this investment becomes harder to justify unless the content strategy evolves to suit the new landscape.

Rethinking SEO in an AI-Dominated Landscape

The answer is not to abandon SEO — far from it. It is, instead, to recalibrate how you approach content, presentation, and user trust within AI-enhanced search environments.

First, understand that while AI may summarise basic information, it cannot offer context-aware, human legal insight — and that is your firm’s intrinsic advantage. By subtly shifting the way your content is crafted, you can reframe your site as a destination for depth, reassurance and professional nuance, not just answers.

Here are refined strategies law firms can adopt:

1. Optimise for Engagement, Not Just Rankings

Rather than only chasing first-page placement, focus on building richly constructed content that prioritises usefulness, clarity and credibility. Engage the user emotionally and intellectually. AI might be able to rephrase statute summaries, but it cannot replicate the empathetic tone or detailed case studies your firm can produce. Integrate calls to action within the content itself that appeal to the user’s need for guidance beyond what the search engine can offer.

2. Create “AI-Proof” Cornerstone Content

While AI can display top-level facts, it often struggles with interpretive, layered or jurisdiction-specific advice. Develop cornerstone content that goes deeper into topics AI typically oversimplifies. Think in terms of longform insights, legal myths versus realities, expert interviews, and narrative-driven case examples.

For instance, instead of a straightforward article like “How Divorce Works in England,” produce something nuanced like, “What High-Earning Professionals Should Know Before Divorce Proceedings in England: Expert Tips.” Make content that is memorable, referable and hard for AI to replicate or summarise simply.

3. Leverage Schema Markup Intelligently

Schema markup helps search engines interpret your data better. Law firms can use structured data — like FAQs, reviews and practice area specialities — to qualify for enhanced listings in search. When used smartly, it increases your visibility in a meaningful way and can aid your content in being cited as a trusted source in AI-generated results.

Yes, this might lead to more impressions with no clicks, but over time it builds authority. Being frequently cited reinforces your brand as the go-to legal voice, encouraging brand searches that leapfrog the AI content entirely.

4. Embrace Conversational and Voice-Search Optimisation

AI interfaces, including Siri, Alexa, and chat-based search engines, require a different style of optimisation. Law firms should start integrating conversational language naturally into their content. Instead of writing for traditional readers only, you’re now writing for intent-driven AI parsers.

This includes anticipating client questions and formatting content in a QA structure that voice search AIs can extract from clearly. Additionally, use regional phrasing where possible — people don’t search for “solicitor services” as often as they search for “a solicitor near me for landlord disputes in Manchester.”

5. Build AI-Assisted Client Funnels on Your Own Turf

Rather than compete with AI-packed search results, law firms can harness AI within their own digital infrastructure to prevent bounce rates and improve engagement when users land on your pages. Intelligent chatbots, FAQ bots, and guided prompts can help capture user attention and move them from interest to consultation.

AI doesn’t just belong to Google. Law firms can use custom-trained algorithms to detect visitor intention, offer document downloads, suggest relevant services, and even pre-qualify leads. These tools not only outperform static pages but align user expectation with action.

The Future: AI and Legal Credibility

Perhaps the most intriguing tension AI introduces into law firm marketing is that of credibility. While AI can mimic text-based authority, trust in legal matters is emotionally grounded. Clients want to speak with someone. They want reassurance. They want to feel confidence that behind the advice is an expert accountable to a code of ethics and a history of practice.

This is where AI falters. Law firms need to double down on displaying accreditations, testimonials, solicitor bios, partner Q&As, and even professional video introductions. The face of your law firm — not just its SEO footprint — now matters more than ever as a differentiator in a faceless AI world.

Conclusion: Turning Visibility Into Opportunity

If your law firm’s SEO impressions are up but clicks are down, it is not a sign your strategy has failed — but that the playing field has shifted. AI is the silent middleman in this new search environment, absorbing data, condensing insight, and gating traffic. However, it can also be turned into a powerful ally.

By adapting your content strategies, enhancing the depth and uniqueness of your content, and deploying AI tools internally to improve client interaction, your firm can thrive in this algorithmic arms race. The real winners won’t just be visible — they’ll be the firms that figure out how to convert visibility into trust, connection and ultimately, clients.

For expert implementation of custom AI solutions tailored to solicitors and legal practice, explore our cutting-edge services in AI for Law Firms.