Zero-click search
A zero-click search is one where the person gets what they needed on the results page and never visits a website.
It long predates AI: opening hours, phone numbers, currency conversions and weather have been answered on the page for years.
AI Overviews have widened it considerably, because a whole explanation now fits where a snippet used to sit.
Your business can still win a zero-click search, since someone reading your opening hours and calling you has converted without a visit.
What it breaks is measurement, because that customer appears in no analytics report as a website visit.
It also means impressions and clicks now tell genuinely different stories, and only 1 of them is about people arriving.
What this means for you
This is why I report click-through rate rather than rankings. Rankings can hold perfectly steady while the visits quietly stop, and only the click-through rate shows it.
This one sits under AI search.
Related terms
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