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SEO & AEO

Zero-click search

Also known as: no-click search · zero-click

Definition

A zero-click search is a search that ends on the results page without the searcher clicking through to any website, because the answer, summary, map or phone number was shown there. It describes what the searcher did, not whether a page ranked.

The best-known figures are American. SparkToro's 2026 analysis of Similarweb panel data, as reported by Search Engine Journal, found that 68% of US Google searches from January to April 2026 produced no click at all, with 232 open-web clicks per 1,000 searches. Its 2024 study used a different panel and reported 360 open-web clicks per 1,000, but SparkToro's Rand Fishkin warns the two are not like for like, so together they do not show a trend.

Pew Research's March 2025 browsing data from 900 US adults found a traditional result was clicked in 8% of Google visits that showed an AI summary and 15% of visits that did not, though Google told The Register the study's method was flawed. No UAE equivalent was found, so the only number you can trust is your own: compare impressions with clicks for your key queries in Google Search Console, month by month. Impressions holding steady while clicks fall suggests searchers are reading the answer on the results page.

Zero-click doesn't mean zero value. A searcher who reads your opening hours and phone number in a map listing and rings you has produced a lead without a visit, which is why calls, direction requests and WhatsApp taps belong beside sessions in any report on search.

More in SEO & AEO

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)

AEO is the practice of structuring content and data so AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite a business as a source when answering questions, including when no click follows.

AI citation

An AI citation is a reference to a source inside an AI-generated answer, usually a named link to the page the assistant drew on. A brand can also be mentioned without a link, and an answer can use a page without crediting it.

AI crawlers

AI crawlers are automated programs run by AI companies that fetch web pages, either to gather material for training models or to find content for an answer. Examples include OpenAI's GPTBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot and Perplexity's PerplexityBot. Google-Extended is a robots.txt control rather than a separate crawler.

AI SEO

AI SEO is a label for two different jobs: getting a business cited or mentioned in answers from AI search tools, and using AI tools to do SEO work faster. Which one a speaker means decides what is actually being sold.

AI visibility

How often a brand is named or cited in answers from AI assistants for the prompts its buyers actually use. The emerging equivalent of rank tracking, measured by prompting at scale and counting mentions.

Alt text

Alt text is the written description in an image's alt attribute. Screen readers read it aloud for people who cannot see the image, browsers show it when the image fails to load, and search engines use it to understand what the image shows.

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