More than two-thirds of all Google searches in the US now end without anyone clicking a link. That is according to a study by SparkToro and Similarweb, published on 11 June 2026. The so-called zero-click rate now stands at 68.01% — an increase of 7.56 percentage points compared to 2024. That may sound abstract, but the concrete translation is more telling: of every 1,000 searches, only 276 visitors still reach a website. In 2024 that was 374.
Why is the zero-click rate rising?
The main culprit is Google’s AI Overviews: the automatically generated summaries that appear at the top of the search results. They are now shown for more than 20% of all searches. When such an AI summary is visible, the click-through rate drops by about 60%, according to research by Ahrefs cited in the SparkToro study.
A much-discussed cause — Google’s AI Mode — plays a modest role for now. In the first four months of 2026, only 0.34% of searches were handled via AI Mode. So the real pressure currently comes from the regular AI summaries, not from the new AI search experience.
What does this mean for you as a business owner?
It does not mean SEO becomes pointless — but it does mean that website traffic as the only metric says less and less. Anyone who measures their strategy solely by visitor numbers can get a distorted picture.
What does still work:
- Branded searches — searches for your company name or product still generate clicks.
- Local and transactional searches — “roofer Rotterdam” or “buy a mountain bike” more often do end in a click.
- Being cited in AI answers — if Google’s AI summary uses your website as a source, that increases your visibility even without a click.
The practical lesson: make sure your content is structured so that Google and other AI search engines can easily distil a clear answer from it. Short, factual paragraphs, a clear structure and structured data (schema markup) all help.
Still tied to a traffic dashboard as your only gauge? Then it is time to also measure how often your name appears in AI answers and the quality of the visitors who do click through.
Source: SparkToro / Similarweb — Zero-Click Study, via Digital Applied (June 2026)
