Less Than a Third of Google Searches Now Send a Click

The share of searches producing at least one click fell 9.51 points, a 22.9% decline, over the same period . Rand Fishkin, SparkToro's co-founder, framed it bluntly: less than a third of Google searches now send a visit to the open web .

AI Overviews are the primary driver

Fishkin's analysis points directly at Google's AI-generated search summaries. AI Overviews now appear on more than 20% of all Google queries, and when they do, they reduce click-through rates by nearly 60% . The study describes the rise in zero-click searches as "almost certainly driven by the massive growth in AI Overviews" .

Importantly, the research does not attempt to isolate precisely how much of the total increase from 2024 to 2026 can be attributed to AI Overviews alone . Other factors, including featured snippets, knowledge panels, and evolving user behavior, also contribute.

Google's newer AI Mode, which replaces the traditional search results page with a conversational interface, played only a minimal role during the study period—appearing on just 0.34% of searches. But its growth trajectory suggests it could accelerate the zero-click trend further. Seer Interactive's data shows AI Mode already processes close to 1 billion monthly queries with a 93% zero-click rate .

Other data points reinforce the pattern:

• Queries that trigger AI Overviews experience zero-click rates as high as 83%, compared to roughly 60% for traditional results .
• BrightEdge measured AI Overviews on 48% of searches as of February 2026, up 58% year over year, peaking at 83% in the education sector .
• The tech publication Digital Trends has reportedly seen a 97% drop in traffic from Google since the rollout of AI Overviews .

The long arc: zero-click search from 2016 to 2026

SparkToro has been tracking this metric for a decade, using different clickstream panels across the years, so the numbers aren't perfectly apples-to-apples, but the direction is unmistakable:

• 2016: ~45% zero-click
• 2019: 49% (Jumpshot panel)
• 2020: ~64.82% (SimilarWeb data)
• 2024: 58.5–60.45% (Datos panel)
• 2026: 68.01% (Similarweb panel)

Over ten years, the zero-click rate has increased by 23 percentage points—a 33.8% relative jump . The 2024-to-2026 leap is the sharpest two-year rise on record, and with AI Overviews and AI Mode still expanding, the trajectory shows no sign of flattening.

What website owners should do about it

Fishkin's advice in the companion SparkToro post is pragmatic: invest in brand awareness and influence on the platforms where your audience already spends time, even if those efforts don't send clicks back to your site . Traditional SEO aimed at regaining historical traffic levels is becoming insufficient for most publishers.

The search queries that still benefit meaningfully from search engine optimization are branded searches, local business queries, and high-intent transactional searches . For informational queries—the kind Google is increasingly answering on its own—the click economy is shrinking fast.

Amanda Natividad, in a companion post, argues that winning websites are becoming "true destinations"—places where users complete a task directly, whether buying, calculating, booking, or creating, rather than sites that simply explain something and point elsewhere .

The bottom line is stark: Google is no longer a reliable traffic pipeline for most websites. Building direct relationships with audiences, on platforms and through experiences that don't depend on a blue link from a search results page, is now a survival strategy.