What zero click search does to a UK B2B firm's numbers
One invented payroll software firm, real click-through data and a ten-minute Search Console check you can run today
A zero click search is a Google search that ends without a click on any result, because the searcher got the answer on the page or searched again. In the UK, 69.5% of Google searches ended that way from January to April 2026, the highest of six countries measured.
In short
- In the UK, 69.5% of Google searches ended without a click in early 2026, and only 232 clicks per 1,000 searches reached the open web.
- Ahrefs found that an AI Overview cuts the top result's click-through rate by about 58%, on top of a general fall in clicks on informational queries.
- When impressions and position hold steady in Search Console but clicks fall, that points to zero-click loss, not a broken site.
- AI answers still draw heavily on what ranks in Google, so SEO still matters, but sessions on informational pages make a poor headline KPI.
- Report enquiries and the companies that visit instead, because the smaller audience that does click has often already read Google's summary and still wanted more.
A zero click search is a Google search that ends without a click on any result: the searcher got what they needed on the results page, or simply searched again. In the UK, 69.5% of Google searches ended that way between January and April 2026, the highest rate of the six countries Similarweb measured for SparkToro.1
So a fall in organic traffic doesn't mean what it used to for a B2B team. We'll follow one invented UK firm through its numbers, from the report that worried its managing director to the check that explained it.
What is a zero click search, and what is Google Zero?
A Google results page can give a searcher three kinds of output. Organic results are the ordinary links Google ranks for free. Paid results are the ads marked Sponsored. The third kind is Google's own answers: AI Overviews, the generated summary that now sits above many results, plus featured snippets, People also ask boxes, knowledge panels and maps. Only that third kind lets a search end with nobody leaving Google. And it's the kind that keeps growing.
The UK figures are stark. Of the UK searches that did produce a click, 76.1% of the clicks went to organic or paid results and 7.3% to Alphabet's own sites such as YouTube. Per 1,000 UK searches, only 232 clicks reached the open web.1 The US is catching up fast: the zero-click share there rose from 60.45% in 2024 to 68.01% in early 2026, which SparkToro calls the fastest acceleration of the trend in a decade, almost certainly driven by AI Overviews.2
"Google Zero" is the name for where this ends up. Nilay Patel of The Verge coined it in 2024 to describe the moment Google stops working as a gateway to the web and becomes an answer engine.3 Publishers talk about it most. But B2B websites that rely on how-to content are facing the same shift.
Calder Payroll's traffic report looks broken
Calder Payroll is made up for this article: a 25-person payroll software company in Huddersfield, not a client. Its best page is a guide to calculating holiday pay for irregular-hours workers. The guide ranks first in Google for a cluster of questions on the topic, and those questions bring roughly 10,000 desktop impressions a month (an impression is one appearance of the page in someone's results).
Two years ago that guide was the firm's biggest source of organic visits. Now sessions to it are down by about four fifths.
The ranking hasn't moved. So the MD's first question is whether the SEO agency has broken something.
Where Calder's clicks went
Nobody broke anything. Ahrefs measured this across 300,000 keywords using aggregated Search Console data. In December 2023, a page ranking first for an informational keyword earned an average click-through rate of 7.6%. By December 2025 that had dropped to 3.9% for informational keywords with no AI Overview. Where an AI Overview did appear, the top result's click-through rate was about 1.6%, roughly 58% below what Ahrefs would have expected without it.4
Put Calder's 10,000 impressions through those rates and the drop makes sense. In late 2023, position one was worth about 760 clicks a month. Without the AI Overview, Ahrefs' predicted rate of 3.7% would give about 370. With one, Calder gets about 160. Two things are happening at once: clicks on informational questions have roughly halved across the board, and the AI Overview then takes more than half of what's left.
What people actually do on the page backs this up. Pew Research tracked the browsing of more than 900 US adults in March 2025 and found they clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits where an AI summary appeared, against 15% where none did. Only 1% clicked a link inside the summary itself.5 Being cited in an AI Overview is worth having. It isn't a traffic plan, though. We covered what this does to B2B click-through rates in more depth in AI Overviews and anonymous visits.
How do you measure zero-click search in Search Console?
You can run this check on your own site in about ten minutes:
- In Search Console's Performance report, compare the last three months with the same three months a year earlier, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position all switched on.
- Open the Queries tab and sort by impressions. Look for queries where impressions and position held steady while clicks fell. That shape means Google is still showing your page but people aren't clicking through.
- Separate question-style queries from branded and product queries. SparkToro's view is that branded searches, local businesses and high-intent transactional queries still benefit from SEO, so expect those to hold up better.2
- Search your five biggest lost-click queries yourself while signed out, and note whether an AI Overview appears and if you're cited. Then ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot the questions your buyers ask, once a month, and log whether your firm is named.
- In GA4, compare enquiries or demo requests from organic search over the same two periods for the affected pages.
For Calder, step 2 shows exactly that shape on the holiday pay queries. Step 5 is the reassuring one: demo requests from the guide barely moved. Most of the lost visits came from people who only wanted the answer, and they were never going to book a demo.
No single source tells you the whole story, so it helps to know where each one stops:
| Data source | What it tells Calder | What it doesn't |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Impressions, clicks, click-through rate and position for each query and page | Which organisations made the searches: not publicly documented |
| GA4 | Sessions, landing pages and conversions on the site | Which company each session came from: not publicly documented |
| Monthly AI answer log | Whether ChatGPT, Perplexity or an AI Overview names Calder for buyer questions | How often each question is asked: not publicly documented |
| Scout (our product) | The company behind each visit with a 1 to 99 confidence score, plus that company's GA4 session depth, pages read and associated Search Console queries | The individual person: Scout identifies companies, not people |
Will AI replace SEO?
No, though it changes what SEO is for. AI Mode, Google's chat-style search, accounted for only 0.34% of US searches from January to April 2026. That share won't stay small: Google said at its I/O conference in 2026 that AI Mode had passed 1 billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter.2 But the answers still come from the web, and SparkToro's Rand Fishkin points out that "AI answers draw extensively from what ranks highly in Google".2 The page that ranks is still the page that gets quoted.
What does change is the scoreboard. Fishkin's own advice is to stop treating traffic as the main measure of digital marketing.2 We'd go further for B2B and report sessions on informational pages as context, not as the target.
Calder's plan follows from that. It keeps the holiday pay guide accurate and current, because the AI Overview is drawing on it either way. It shifts effort towards pages people still click through to, such as pricing pages and comparisons with bureau payroll. And its monthly report now leads with enquiries and the companies that visited, with sessions moved further down.
Fewer clicks make each visit count for more
With only 232 of every 1,000 UK searches reaching the open web, the people who do arrive have often read Google's summary and still wanted more. Scout shows which companies those visits came from, with a confidence score for every match and the search queries associated with each company, so a smaller audience doesn't have to be an anonymous one. Start a 14-day free trial, no card needed.
Frequently asked questions
What is a zero click search?
A zero click search is a Google search that ends without the searcher clicking any result. They either found the answer on the results page, for example in an AI Overview or featured snippet, or they searched again. In the UK, 69.5% of Google searches ended this way between January and April 2026.
What is Google Zero and who coined it?
Google Zero is the point at which Google stops acting as a gateway to the web and becomes an answer engine that gives the answer itself. Nilay Patel of The Verge coined the term in 2024.
Will AI replace SEO?
Not on current evidence. AI answers draw heavily on pages that rank well in Google, so ranking still decides who gets quoted. What changes is the measure: traffic from informational queries is falling, so enquiries, brand visibility and the companies that visit are better ways to judge SEO.
How can I tell if AI Overviews are taking my clicks?
In Search Console's Performance report, compare the last three months with the same period a year earlier. Queries where impressions and average position held steady but clicks fell are the likely casualties. Then search those queries yourself while signed out and see if an AI Overview appears.
What are the three types of Google search results?
Organic results are the free links Google ranks. Paid results are the ads marked Sponsored. The third type is Google's own answers, such as AI Overviews, featured snippets, People also ask boxes and knowledge panels, which can satisfy a searcher without any click at all.
Sources
- SparkToro: Zero-Click Searches: Highest in the UK, Lowest in Germany, and France has the Most Efficient Searchers sparktoro.com
- SparkToro: In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click sparktoro.com
- Digiday: WTF is 'Google Zero'? digiday.com
- Ahrefs: Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% ahrefs.com
- Search Engine Journal: Pew Research Confirms Google AI Overviews Is Eroding Web Ecosystem searchenginejournal.com