What Is Zero-Click Search (and What to Do About It)?

A zero-click search is a search where the person types a query, looks at the results, and leaves without clicking any result that takes them to another website. The search still happened. Google still showed results. But no website received a visitor from it.

The name comes from clickstream research. Analysts watch anonymized browser panels and record what happens after each search. Did the person click an organic result? An ad? A Google property such as Maps or YouTube? Did they change the query? Or did they do nothing at all? The “nothing at all” bucket, and in some studies the “searched again” bucket, is what gets called zero-click.

It helps to picture a real case. Say you run a small boutique hotel by the river in Bangkok. (This is a hypothetical example we will use throughout the guide.) Someone searches “check-in time riverside hotel bangkok”. Google shows your hotel’s Business Profile with the check-in time, a map pin and a call button. The guest reads 2:00 pm, taps Directions, and arrives that afternoon. You got a guest. Your website got zero clicks.

Now picture a second searcher who types “is it worth staying near the river in bangkok”. An AI Overview writes four short paragraphs about the river area, transport, and price ranges, and lists three sources underneath. The searcher reads it, nods, and closes the tab. Nobody got a click. Whether anybody got anything out of it depends on whose facts and whose brand ended up inside that answer.

Both searches above are zero-click. One was great for the business and one may have been neutral or useful, depending on whether the brand was named. That is the first thing to understand: zero-click describes what happened to the click, not whether the search had value for you.

If you are new to the idea of optimizing for answers rather than links, our plain-English guide to answer engine optimization explains the bigger shift that zero-click search is part of.

Zero-click search was not invented by AI. It grew out of years of Google adding more answers directly to the results page, each one a reasonable product choice on its own, and together a big change in how much traffic leaves Google.

The early steps were small. Calculators, unit converters, weather, sports scores and flight status all appeared in the results. Nobody needed a website to learn that it was 31°C in Bangkok, so nobody clicked.

Then came featured snippets. Google describes them as boxes that flip the normal layout and show the descriptive snippet first, and its featured snippets documentation is blunt that you cannot mark up a page to become one: Google’s systems decide. A good snippet often answered the question so well that the click became optional.

Knowledge panels, local map packs, “People also ask” boxes, image and video carousels followed. By 2019, SparkToro’s Jumpshot-based analysis put US zero-click searches at 49%, according to SparkToro’s 2026 report, which recaps the history.

The biggest step came with generative AI. Google rolled out AI Overviews in the US in May 2024 and, by its own May 2025 announcement, expanded them to more than 200 countries and territories and more than 40 languages. On Alphabet’s Q2 2025 earnings call on 23 July 2025, Sundar Pichai said AI Overviews had over 2 billion monthly users and that AI Mode already had over 100 million monthly active users in the US and India.

Chatbots took the idea to its end point. In ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, there is no list of ten links to click in the first place. There is an answer, and sometimes a few small source links. If you want to understand how those systems pick what to show, our explainer on how AI search engines work walks through it step by step.

So zero-click search is the long trend, and AI is the latest and fastest part of it. That matters because it tells you the fix is not a one-off trick for AI. It is a change in what you are trying to win.

Zero-click searches are now the majority of Google searches in the US. The newest large study, published by SparkToro’s Rand Fishkin in June 2026 using Similarweb panel data, found that 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click between January and April 2026.

That figure covers desktop and mobile web browsers. It excludes searches made in the Google mobile app, which SparkToro notes likely have an even higher zero-click rate. The study also found that clicks of any kind, including organic, paid and Google-owned properties, fell 9.51 points versus 2024, a 22.9% decline, and that searches leading to another search rose 7.2 points.

The 2024 edition of the same research, built on Datos clickstream data, found 58.5% of US searches and 59.7% of EU searches ended without a click. It also estimated that for every 1,000 US Google searches, only 360 clicks went to the open web, meaning a site that is not Google-owned and not an ad. Rand Fishkin shared the study on X when it came out:

Similarweb, whose data powered the 2026 study, reported its own trend in July 2025. Its analysis found that zero-click searches grew from 56% to 69% between May 2024, when AI Overviews launched in the US, and May 2025, according to Search Engine Roundtable’s summary of the report. The same report found organic visits to news sites fell from over 2.3 billion in mid-2024 to under 1.7 billion.

Consumer surveys point the same way. Bain and Company’s February 2025 report, based on a December 2024 survey of 1,117 US consumers, found that about 80% of consumers rely on zero-click results in at least 40% of their searches, and estimated that this reduces organic web traffic by 15% to 25%.

A note on geography: almost all of this research is about the US, with some EU data. We have not found a public clickstream study of zero-click rates in Thailand, so we will not guess one. What we can say is that the features behind zero-click search, such as map packs, knowledge panels and, in many markets, AI Overviews, are available worldwide, so the same forces apply.

Most zero-click results come from a short list of search features that answer the question, or start the next action, on the results page itself. Knowing which one appears for your important searches is the first step in deciding what to do.

AI Overviews. A written summary at the top of the page, with supporting links. Google’s AI features documentation says a page only needs to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to be used as a supporting link, and that there are no extra technical requirements. We dig into how they affect clicks in the next section.

AI Mode. A separate, conversational search experience. Google says both AI Overviews and AI Mode may use “query fan-out”, issuing multiple related searches across subtopics to build the answer. That means your page can be pulled in for a sub-question you never targeted.

Featured snippets. One page’s text quoted above the results. You can’t mark a page up to get one, but clear, direct answers under clear headings make it more likely. The same writing habits help with AI answers, which is why we teach them together in our guide to answer-first content.

Knowledge panels. Facts about an entity, often pulled from many sources. If your brand has one, the details in it should match your website exactly.

People also ask. Expanding questions with short answers. Each answer can satisfy a related question without a click, though a good one also earns some clicks from curious readers.

Local map pack and Business Profile. For “near me” and local searches, the map pack often is the result. Calls and direction requests happen right there.

Image and video results. Clicks go to Google Images or YouTube. If you make videos, that can still be your brand, just not your website.

AI Overviews make zero-click searches more likely, and every major independent study we reviewed finds fewer clicks when one appears. The size of the drop varies by method, but the direction is consistent.

Pew Research Center (July 2025). Pew tracked 900 US adults who shared their browsing activity in March 2025, covering 68,879 unique Google searches. In its published findings, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared and 15% when it did not. They clicked a link inside the AI summary itself in only about 1% of visits.

Ahrefs (February 2026). Ahrefs compared 300,000 keywords using aggregated Search Console data. For keywords with an AI Overview, the average desktop click-through rate for position one fell from 7.3% in December 2023 to 1.6% in December 2025. For similar informational keywords without an AI Overview, it fell from 7.6% to 3.9%. After adjusting for the general decline, Ahrefs estimates about 58% lower clicks for the top result when an AI Overview is present, up from the 34.5% it measured in April 2025.

Seer Interactive (November 2025). Seer studied 3,119 informational queries across 42 organizations and 25.1 million organic impressions from June 2024 to September 2025. In its September 2025 update, organic click-through rate on queries with an AI Overview fell from 1.76% to 0.61%, a 61% drop. Queries without an AI Overview also fell, from 2.72% to 1.62%, which shows that clicks are falling across the board, not only where AI appears.

A randomized field experiment (April 2026). Researchers Saharsh Agarwal and Ananya Sen, from the Indian School of Business and Carnegie Mellon University, ran a two-week experiment with 1,065 US desktop Chrome users in January and February 2026. A browser extension hid AI Overviews for one group. As Search Engine Journal reported, zero-click searches rose from 54% to 72% when AI Overviews were shown, and outbound organic clicks fell 38% on queries that triggered one. The paper is an unreviewed SSRN draft limited to desktop Chrome users, so treat it as strong but early evidence.

What should you take from this? Not panic. Take a plan. Clicks from informational searches are shrinking, and AI Overviews speed it up. For a deeper look at the traffic side and recovery tactics, read our guide on how to optimize for AI Search.

Google’s position is that the web is not losing clicks overall and that the clicks it sends are better than before. Independent researchers and many site owners dispute that, mainly because Google has not shared the data behind it.

On 6 August 2025, Liz Reid, VP and Head of Google Search, wrote that total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been “relatively stable year-over-year”, and that Google is “sending slightly more quality clicks to websites than a year ago”. Google defines quality clicks as ones where users don’t quickly click back. The post gives no percentages and argues that third-party studies showing dramatic declines use flawed methods.

Google’s documentation repeats the quality point. Its AI features page, last updated on 10 December 2025, says clicks from pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, meaning users are more likely to spend more time on the site, and suggests site owners track conversions and time on site rather than clicks alone.

Google also argues that AI makes people search more. Hema Budaraju, a Google Search product VP, wrote in May 2025 that in big markets such as the US and India, AI Overviews drive an over 10% increase in usage of Google for the queries that show them. More searches can mean more impressions for you, even if each search sends fewer clicks.

The industry response was skeptical. Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz noted that Google shared no charts or Search Console figures, that the comparison baseline already included a year of AI Overviews, and that Search Console counts AI Overview and AI Mode activity inside regular web data with no way to separate it.

Both things can be partly true. Google can send a similar total number of clicks because people search more often, while individual sites, especially those that answer simple informational questions, lose a large share of theirs. That is roughly what we see in practice: the total pie may be stable, but the slices have moved.

Google’s Search Central team covered AI Overviews and what they mean for site owners in its July 2024 Search News episode, which is a useful primary source if you want Google’s framing in its own words.

Google Search Central · YouTube

Google Search Central · AI Overviews, e-commerce site updates, and more! (July ’24) · watch on YouTube

Zero-click numbers range from about 25% to over 90% because each study measures something slightly different. None of them is wrong. They answer different questions, and you need to know which question before you use the number.

Different panels. SparkToro’s own history uses Jumpshot for 2019, Datos for 2024 and Similarweb for 2026. Each panel recruits different people with different devices. SparkToro says so clearly and calls its long-run chart a trend rather than a like-for-like series.

Different devices. Desktop and mobile behave differently, and the Google app is often excluded. Semrush’s 2022 study shows how messy this can get: the article gives a 57% mobile zero-click figure in one place and 17.3% in another, which is a good reminder to read methods, not just headlines.

Different definitions. As we covered earlier, some studies count a new search as zero-click and some don’t. Some count clicks to Google Maps or YouTube as clicks, some don’t.

Different query sets. Ahrefs and Seer measure click-through rate on specific keyword sets, mostly informational. Those will always show bigger drops than all searches, because informational queries are where AI Overviews show most.

Searches with a short, settled answer are the most likely to end without a click, along with longer question-style searches that trigger an AI summary. Searches where people need to compare, see details or take action still lead to more clicks.

Pew’s data shows how much query wording matters. Only 8% of one- or two-word searches produced an AI summary, compared with 53% of searches with ten or more words. Among searches starting with a question word such as who, what, when or why, 60% produced a summary.

That lines up with what we see when we check searches for brands. Here is a rough guide, built from the studies above and our own checks, to which kinds of searches tend to keep or lose clicks.

High zero-click risk. Definitions (“what is a deposit policy”), quick facts (“bangkok airport to old town distance”), simple how-to steps, opening hours, and broad “is it worth” questions. These are where AI Overviews and featured snippets do their best work.

Medium risk. “Best” lists and general comparisons. AI answers often summarize them, but people who are close to buying still want to see the options, photos and reviews for themselves.

Lower risk. Searches with clear buying or booking intent, searches for your brand by name, searches that need a tool or calculator, and anything where the person needs to see visual detail, such as room photos or a product page. Semrush’s own guide on zero-click searches makes a similar point: original research, interactive tools and detailed guides hold up better than short “what is” answers.

The clearest sign of zero-click impact is a page whose impressions and average position stay steady while its clicks and click-through rate fall. That pattern means you are still being shown, in the same spot, but people stopped needing to click.

Here is the process we use when a brand asks why its traffic is down even though rankings look fine.

1. In Google Search Console, open the Performance report and compare the last three months with the same three months a year earlier.
2. Switch to the Pages view and sort by the biggest drop in clicks.
3. For each of the top 20 pages, check whether impressions and average position held steady. If they did and CTR fell, flag the page as likely zero-click impact.
4. Open the main queries for each flagged page and search them yourself, on mobile and desktop, logged out. Note whether an AI Overview, featured snippet, map pack or video block appears above you.
5. Note whether your brand or page is named or linked inside that feature.

Two cautions. First, Google’s documentation says AI feature traffic is reported inside the “Web” search type in Search Console, so you cannot simply filter AI Overview clicks out. Second, a falling CTR can also be caused by new competitors, new ads or a weaker title. That is why step four, looking at the real page, matters.

For local businesses, add one more check. Open your Business Profile performance and compare calls, direction requests and website clicks over the same periods. If website clicks fell but calls and directions rose, people are still choosing you; they’re just doing it on the results page.

A quick way to see how your listing appears before anyone clicks is our free SERP snippet preview tool. A clear title and description still decide many of the clicks that remain.

To get cited in AI Overviews and other AI answers, your page has to be reachable and indexed, it has to contain a clear, specific passage that answers the question, and your brand has to be trusted enough, on your site and elsewhere, to be chosen over others.

Be eligible first. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that no special schema, AI text file or markup is required. So the first checks are basic SEO ones: can Googlebot crawl the page, is it indexed, and are you accidentally blocking snippets with nosnippet or a very low max-snippet setting? For ChatGPT and Perplexity, also check that their crawlers are not blocked, which our free AI crawler checker does in a minute.

Answer first, then explain. AI systems pull passages, not whole pages. A section that opens with a one or two sentence answer, then adds detail, is much easier to quote than one that builds slowly to a point. Our riverside hotel’s “Is it worth staying near the river in Bangkok?” page should open with a direct verdict and the facts behind it: distance to the nearest pier, typical travel time to the main sights, and the price range for river-view rooms.

Use specific facts. Numbers, times, prices, names and dates give an AI system something concrete to quote and give readers a reason to trust you. Vague claims give it nothing.

Keep facts consistent. If your website, Business Profile, booking sites and social profiles disagree on check-in times or prices, AI answers may pick the wrong one or skip you. Consistency is boring and it works.

Earn outside mentions. Reviews, local guides, travel blogs, forums such as Pantip and Reddit, and press coverage all help AI systems understand who you are and whether to recommend you.

Each of these steps has a full guide. Start with how to rank in Google AI Overviews, then check your pages with our free AEO content checker. If you want structured data that matches your visible content, our guide to schema markup for AEO explains what helps and what doesn’t.

Pages still earn clicks when they offer something a summary cannot replace: a tool to use, data to explore, detail to compare, or an action to complete. If your page only repeats a fact, expect the results page to take that job.

Tools and calculators. A cost estimator, a size chart, an availability checker. People need to interact with them, so they click.

Original data and research. If you publish numbers nobody else has, AI answers may quote them, but curious readers and journalists still click to see the source. Original research also earns the links and mentions that help with citations.

Detailed comparisons. A summary can say “Room A has a balcony and Room B does not”. It can’t show the photos side by side, the floor plans and the real rates for next weekend.

Transactional pages. Booking, buying, signing up and contacting all require a visit. Make sure these pages load fast, show prices clearly and work on a phone, because the people who reach them are the ones who still click.

First-hand experience. Google’s Liz Reid wrote that users increasingly look for forums, videos and first-hand perspectives. A guide written by someone who has actually done the thing, with real photos and specific details, is more likely to be worth the click than a generic overview.

None of this means you should stop answering simple questions. Those answers are what get you cited. The idea is to pair them: a clear, quotable answer at the top of the page, and a reason to keep reading or take action underneath it.

Start small: find the searches that matter most to your business, see which of them now end without a click, and fix the pages behind those first. A focused 30-day plan beats a vague promise to “do AEO”.

Week 1: map your exposure. Write down the 30 searches that bring you customers or would if you ranked for them. Include a few long, question-style ones. Search each on a phone and a laptop, logged out, and note what appears above the links.

Week 2: fix eligibility. Make sure your key pages are indexed, not blocked from snippets, and reachable by the crawlers you care about. These fixes are quick and they’re the foundation everything else stands on.

Weeks 3 and 4: rewrite and baseline. Pick the five pages with the most exposure and rewrite each section to open with a direct answer and specific facts. Then record your starting numbers: impressions, clicks, AI mentions and citations, branded search and leads. Check again every month.

Expect a lag. Google has to recrawl a page before changes can show, and Google’s documentation says recrawling can take several days to several months. Mentions on other websites take longer still. Zero-click search is a long trend, so the response is a steady habit, not a sprint.

If you’d rather have a second pair of eyes, we can run this check for you and show which of your important searches already end in an AI answer, and whether your brand is in it.

1. SparkToro (Rand Fishkin): In 2026, less than one third of Google searches still send a click (June 2026, Similarweb data)
2. Search Engine Land: Google zero-click searches reach 68% in early 2026
3. Search Engine Land: Nearly 60% of Google searches end without a click (SparkToro and Datos, 2024)
4. Search Engine Roundtable: Google zero click study now at 58.5% in 2024 (3 Jul 2024)
5. Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears (22 Jul 2025)
6. Ahrefs: Update: AI Overviews reduce clicks by 58% (Feb 2026)
7. Seer Interactive: AIO impact on Google CTR, September 2025 update (4 Nov 2025)
8. Search Engine Journal: AI Overviews cut organic clicks 38%, field study finds (Agarwal and Sen, SSRN draft, Apr 2026)
9. Semrush: Google AI Mode study, 69M sessions (30 Jul 2025)
10. Semrush: Zero-clicks study, 20,000 users (25 Oct 2022)
11. Semrush: What is a zero-click search? (May 2026)
12. Search Engine Roundtable: Similarweb: no clicks from Google grew from 56% to 69% since AI Overviews (3 Jul 2025)
13. Google (Liz Reid): AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks (6 Aug 2025)
14. Search Engine Roundtable: Google says clicks are stable with AI Overviews (7 Aug 2025)
15. Google Search Central: AI features and your website (updated 10 Dec 2025)
16. Google Search Central: Featured snippets and your website (updated 10 Dec 2025)
17. Google: AI Overviews expand to 200+ countries and 40+ languages (20 May 2025)
18. Alphabet: Q2 2025 earnings call (23 Jul 2025)
19. Bain and Company: Goodbye clicks, hello AI: zero-click search redefines marketing (19 Feb 2025)
20. Google Business Profile Help: Understand your Business Profile performance and insights

Keep reading

• AEO basicsWhat Is AEO? Answer Engine Optimization Explained
• AI platformsHow to Optimize for Google AI Mode
• AI platformsHow to Rank in Google AI Overviews
• AEO basicsAEO vs SEO vs GEO: What’s the Difference?