Is Your Website Traffic Tanking? Welcome to the Zero-Click Era
By Carrie Cousins
Thank you to Valley Business FRONT for featuring our Vice President, Carrie Cousins, in their July 2026 issue.
There’s something scary happening with website clicks and traffic right now. They are dropping exponentially.
According to multiple sources, including SparkToro, Semrush, and Ahrefs, as much as 68% of all searches end on the results page without a click to any website. The average is somewhat lower for desktop users but spikes as high as 77% for mobile users.
It’s something I am seeing daily with clients here at LeadPoint. No industry or website type seems immune.
It’s something I heard recently from a Google representative at a national conference. She said their goal with Gemini is to keep as many users as possible in a loop of continued information gathering.
The new search model is zero-click. And it will impact your marketing efforts.
What is a zero-click search, anyway?
When you ask a question to Google and the answer displays at the top of the search page in the AI overview, you get the answer immediately and don’t have to click for the answer. That’s zero-click.
The most dramatic change happened just a few weeks ago when Google changed its search bar to focus on artificial intelligence searches. (You are in AI mode unless you click the secondary option for “Google Search.” The impact to web traffic was almost immediate. The difference might seem subtle on desktop searches, but on some mobile searches, there are no “traditional” results with links; everything is an AI result unless you click the small option to see more results. If you find what you are looking for right there, that’s zero-click.
The same thing happens when you search within AI engines such as ChatGPT or Gemini, you get answers directly without linking out of the search window. Even if you do see links, many of them keep you in the platform and you never make it to the referring website. That’s another zero-click.
The bad news: Your traffic is dropping. Your visibility in Google is moving down (or off the page). Even ad placements, where you were paying to show highly in search results, are dropping down the page.
But there’s some good news: When a user does get to your website, it’s a valuable click because they had to do a lot of work to get there. They completed their research and sought out your brand or clicked enough times to get to your website. This click is more likely to convert.
Zero-click search by nature is informational and users are trying to find the answer to something (“how much protein is in peanut butter?”).
Commercial and transactional queries result in fewer zero-click searches and are more likely to get people to the source of information they need (“jif protein peanut butter”).
What can you do in the zero-click era?
You can’t change traffic patterns. But you can adjust your mindset.
1 – Rethink traffic counts. July 2025 website traffic is not comparable to July 2026 website traffic without understanding these changes.
2 – Invest in a solid SEO/GEO/AEO strategy. Good content is more likely to be cited by AI engines and search. Conversions from AI overviews is converting at nearly 23% higher with lower bounce rates, according to Digital Applied.
3 – Think about key indicators that will help more of the right people get from the search and through the AI answer or overview to your website. This includes a renewed focus on brand visibility, solid linking and citations, and authority.
Finally, don’t panic if your traffic is declining. It’s happening to everyone. Go back to your true and actual metrics: How are sales or appointments? Are you still seeing clients?
Just like other marketing and tech changes we’ve seen in the last decade, this will normalize. The important takeaway in the zero-click era is to understand the change and plan accordingly.
Carrie Cousins is the Vice President at LeadPoint Digital in Roanoke. For 15+ years, she has helped businesses tell their stories and get better results online with practical digital marketing strategies. She is also an active leader in AAF, serving on the local and district boards, and is an adjunct professor at Virginia Tech.
