A number that every digital marketer should have committed to memory: 60%. That is the share of Google searches that now end without a single click to any website, according to research published by SparkToro and Datos in 2024.
Six in ten searches. No click. The user got what they needed from the results page itself — from a featured snippet, a knowledge panel, a map, or increasingly, an AI Overview — and moved on.
Where the data comes from
The SparkToro and Datos study analysed over 332 billion searches across desktop and mobile in the United States and Europe. It found that 58.5% of US searches and 59.7% of EU searches resulted in zero clicks in 2024.
This is not a new trend — zero-click searches have been rising for years as Google has added more features that answer questions directly on the results page. What has changed is the pace. The arrival of AI Overviews has accelerated the shift significantly. Informational queries — the ones that previously drove meaningful organic traffic to publishers, bloggers, and brand content pages — are now increasingly answered before a user ever leaves Google.
What happens to that traffic
It does not disappear. Users still act on the information they receive. They make purchases, contact businesses, form opinions about brands. The difference is that they do so having received their information from an AI-generated answer rather than from a brand’s own website.
This has two direct consequences for marketers:
- Organic traffic to informational content is declining. Pages built to rank for “how to” and “what is” queries — the foundation of content marketing for the past decade — are losing clicks to AI Overviews regardless of their ranking position.
- Brand presence in AI answers matters more than rankings. If a user’s question is answered by an AI Overview that does not mention your brand, you have effectively lost that interaction. Being cited in the AI answer — organically through GEO, or through paid GEA placement — is the new version of ranking on page one.
The opportunity inside the shift
Zero-click does not mean zero-value. Google’s own data shows that AI Overview interactions drive meaningful downstream behaviour — users who engage with AI answers are more likely to make a purchase decision than users who click through a standard results list, because the AI has already helped them synthesise information and move closer to a conclusion.
The implication for advertisers is direct: being present in the AI answer — whether through organic citation or paid placement — is now more valuable than ranking in a list of links most users never click.
Sources: SparkToro — 2024 Zero-Click Search Study · Search Engine Land — Zero-click searches hit record high · BrightEdge — AI Search Impact Research