Fewer clicks, more influence: what zero-click search means for brands

For years the deal was simple. Publishers produced the journalism, search engines sent readers to it, and brands that paid for coverage could point to the traffic.

AI summaries are rewriting that deal. Google now puts a generated answer above the links: in one study of browsing in March 2025, about one in five Google searches produced an AI summary[1]. AI Mode, a search tab that answers in a conversational style much like a chatbot, goes further[2], as do assistants such as ChatGPT. A reader can learn what a company does, and who reported on it, without visiting a website.

For anyone buying media visibility, that raises a practical question: if fewer people click, what are you paying for, and how should you measure it?

How far are clicks falling?

What the independent studies show

The most cited study comes from Pew Research Center, which tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. Users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits, against 15% when there was no summary. Only 1% of visits involved a click on a link inside the summary itself[1].

Similarweb found that the share of news searches on Google ending without a click rose from 56% in May 2024, when AI Overviews launched widely in the US, to almost 69% in May 2025. Over the same period, organic traffic to news publishers fell from more than 2.3 billion visits at its peak to under 1.7 billion[3].

Seer Interactive tracked 3,119 informational queries across 42 client organisations. Organic click-through rates on queries showing an AI Overview fell 61% between June 2024 and September 2025, from 1.76% to 0.61%[4].

Chartbeat data compiled for the Reuters Institute show that Google organic search traffic to more than 2,500 sites fell by a third (33%) globally between November 2024 and November 2025, and by 38% in the United States. Media leaders surveyed by the Institute expect search traffic to fall by more than 40% over the next three years[5].

The most rigorous evidence so far comes from a preregistered field experiment with 1,100 US participants, published as a preprint in August 2026. Forcing every search into AI Mode cut the click-through rate to outside websites by 18.8 percentage points. Removing AI Overviews raised it by an estimated 8.8 points, an adjusted figure explained below[6].

Google’s counterpoint

Google disputes the scale of the damage. Its Search Central blog said in May 2025 that when people click through from results pages with AI Overviews, “these clicks are higher quality, where users are more likely to spend more time on the site”[7].

In August 2025 Liz Reid, Google’s head of Search, wrote that total organic click volume to websites had been “relatively stable year-over-year” and that Google was sending “slightly more quality clicks” than a year earlier. She said third-party reports of dramatic declines were “often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples” or changes that predated Google’s AI features[8]. The post gave no figures to back this.

Where the evidence is contested

The studies use different methods, from browsing panels to publisher analytics. The Reuters Institute itself says it is “not clear how much of this is down to AI overviews”[5]. Seer found that click-through on queries without an AI Overview also fell, by 41%, which points to other forces at work[4]. The field experiment has its own limit: a Google interface change meant the researchers could hide AI features for only about half of the no-AI group. The 8.8-point figure adjusts for that; measured without the adjustment, the effect of removing AI Overviews was 2.7 points and not statistically significant[6].

The effect varies by subject, too. Hard news queries mostly remain excluded from AI Overviews[9], while publishers of lifestyle or utility content, such as weather, TV guides or horoscopes, are more likely to have been hit[5]. And 42% of people who use AI chatbots for news say they always or often click through to original sources, close to the 44% for search, though the Reuters Institute cautions that these are different groups and that what people say may differ from what they do[9].

The fair reading: the direction is clear, but the size depends on the query, the sector and the method.

Why page views are now a weaker measure

Page views were a reasonable proxy for influence when most discovery ended in a click. Now a decision maker can read a summary that names your company and repeats your figures, then move on. The coverage has done its job, yet the publisher’s analytics will not record it.

A fall in page views may also reflect a change on Google’s results page rather than weak journalism or a poor audience.

Google itself warns site owners not to “focus too much on clicks instead of the overall value of your visits from Search”[7]. Buyers can apply the same logic. Traffic still matters and is easy to audit, but it is no longer enough on its own.

What matters more now

Being named in the answer

When an AI summary appears, the most valuable place to be is inside it. Seer found that brands cited in an AI Overview received 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than when they were not cited, though it cannot prove citation causes the uplift: stronger brands may simply be cited more often[4].

So how a company is described matters as much as where. An article that names it clearly and includes verifiable facts gives an AI system something accurate to repeat.

The authority of the publication

Recognised names still seem to earn clicks. Similarweb’s data showed a far smaller rise in zero-click searches for the 100 biggest news sites, from 50.5% to 52.7% in a year, which Press Gazette said “could suggest that people are more likely to click through to well-known brands that they know and trust”[3].

Trust in AI answers is low. The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report puts trust in answers from AI chatbots at 20% globally, against 37% for news overall[9]. In the field experiment, an AI Mode-only experience reduced trust in information found on Google[6]. A citation from a publication readers already trust carries weight that an unfamiliar source does not.

Specialist, well-defined audiences

In the Reuters Institute’s survey of 280 media leaders, respondents planned more original reporting and analysis, and less service journalism, evergreen content and general news, which many expect AI chatbots to commoditise. LinkedIn, the report adds, has become “an important source of traffic for specialist and business publications in particular”[5].

A specialist title that can show who reads it, by sector, role and market, is easier to value than a large, anonymous audience.

Newsletters and direct audiences

Readers who arrive through a newsletter, an app or a bookmark never pass through a results page, so zero-click search does not affect them directly. Most publishers have a primary strategy of building direct relationships through their own websites and apps, and some are turning to newsletter platforms such as Substack to find new audiences[5]. A strong direct audience puts coverage in front of readers, not just in a search index.

Durable content that keeps being cited

AI systems do not only cite yesterday’s news. An Ahrefs analysis of about 17 million citations found that pages cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini were on average 1,064 days old, about 2.9 years. Google’s top three AI Overview citations were older still, at more than 3.9 years. The assistants did favour fresher pages than ordinary search results, so keeping content current helps[10].

Coverage is not a one-day event: a well-sourced feature can keep surfacing in answers long after it runs, provided it stays online. The caveat is that publishers plan to cut back on evergreen and service content, such as travel guides and product reviews, which some expect AI chatbots to handle better[5]. Lasting value comes from what an AI system cannot produce on its own: original data, named experts and real analysis.

The regulatory backdrop

In December 2025 the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into whether Google used publishers’ content for AI Overviews and AI Mode “without appropriate compensation”, and without letting them refuse “without losing access to Google Search”. Opening an investigation does not prejudge its outcome[2].

In June 2026 the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority imposed a conduct requirement that, in what it called a world first, gives publishers tools to stop their content being used to power AI features such as AI Overviews. Google must also ensure publisher content is “properly attributed, using clear links” in AI-generated results, and has nine months to make the changes[11].

Measurement is improving too. In June 2026 Google launched generative AI performance reports in Search Console, showing how often a site’s pages appear in AI Overviews, AI Mode and AI features in Discover, by page, country, device and date. Since 31 August 2026 they have been available to all websites worldwide[12], so a publisher can now show a client how often an article appeared in Google’s AI answers.

What to ask a publisher now

1. How often have the pages about us appeared in Google’s AI features? Can you share the Search Console generative AI report for those URLs?
2. Who reads you? Can you break your audience down by sector, job role and country, and explain how you know?
3. What share of your readers comes directly, through newsletters, apps or your homepage, and how has that changed in the past year?
4. Beyond page views, what engagement data will you report, such as time spent, returning readers and newsletter clicks?
5. Will the article name our company clearly, stay at a permanent address and be updated if the facts change?
6. Have you opted out of AI features in search, or do you plan to? How would that affect where our coverage appears?
7. Can you show past coverage being cited in AI answers, or by other publications, months after it ran?