What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
How AI assistants choose which sources to cite, and what you can change.
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Short answer
A zero-click search is one that ends on the results page. The person reads an answer box, a map listing or an AI summary and moves on without opening any website. For a business, this means a growing part of its audience sees it, or a competitor, without ever visiting. AI answers push the trend further: in SparkToro’s 2024 study, 58.5% of US Google searches ended with no click. Being visible on the results page now counts as a result of its own.
What the studies measured
Every number below depends on how it was collected. Clickstream panels watch the browsing of a sample of users, and different panels give different answers. Quote the study and the year, never a bare percentage.
| Study | Data | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| SparkToro, 2024 zero-click study | Datos clickstream panel, September 2022 to May 2024 | 58.5% of US Google searches and 59.7% of EU searches ended with no click. For every 1,000 US searches, 360 clicks reached sites outside Google. |
| SparkToro, published June 2026 | Similarweb desktop and mobile web panel, January to April 2026 | 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click of any kind. The author warns the panels differ, so the change since 2024 is not a clean comparison (SparkToro itself restates the 2024 US figure as 60.45%). Google’s mobile app is not included. |
| Pew Research Center, July 2025 | browsing data of 900 US adults, March 2025 | When an AI summary appeared, people clicked a regular result in 8% of visits, against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits. Summaries showed on 18% of the searches studied. |
Pew also found that people ended their browsing session on 26% of results pages with an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages with regular results only.
Why searches end without a click
- The answer is already shown. Opening hours, a phone number, a definition, a conversion, a score.
- Google keeps the visit. SparkToro’s 2024 study found that almost 30% of US clicks went to platforms that Google itself owns.
- An AI summary covers the question. Pew’s numbers show fewer clicks when a summary is present.
- The person searches again. A new query replaces a click when the first results don’t fit.
None of these mean the searcher lost interest in buying. Many of them will call, book or come back later by typing the brand name.
What it means for a service business
For local and professional services, the results page itself is often the first meeting. A buyer looking for a plumber or an accountant may read the AI summary, glance at the map, check the rating and call, all without a website visit. Your Business Profile, your reviews and the sentence an AI answer quotes from your page do the selling at that moment.
We see the same shift in our home market. In our tracked set for aoe.kz, Russian-language queries in Almaty on desktop, Google showed an AI Overview on 14 of 17 queries on September 22, 2026 and on 16 of 20 on October 6. When most of the questions you care about already show an AI answer, getting your page linked inside it matters more than a tenth-place blue link. More on that in our AI citations guide.
Every number below depends on how it was collected.
How to see the effect in your data
Google’s documentation on AI features says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the normal Search Console performance report, under the “Web” search type. There is no separate AI view. So you read it indirectly.
| What to look at | Where | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions up, clicks flat, position stable | Search Console, Queries tab | people see you but get the answer on the page |
| Clicks down on one page only | Search Console, Pages tab | a summary or a rival’s page now covers that topic |
| Calls and direction requests | Business Profile performance | contacts that never touch the site |
| Searches for your brand name | Search Console, filtered by brand | interest that may have started on a results page |
| Leads by source | your CRM or form log | whether the business result moved, not only the traffic |
A falling click rate with a steady position is usually a zero-click effect, not a ranking loss. Check the results page by hand before you rewrite anything.
What to do
- List your top 20
queries by impressions and search each one. Note which show an AI summary, a map or an answer box.
- Rewrite the first paragraph
of the pages behind those queries so that a quoted sentence carries your name or your offer, not only a definition.
- Bring your Business Profile
up to date: hours, phone, service list, photos, replies to reviews.
- Shift effort toward questions
that need a visit: price for a specific case, comparing options, booking. Simple definitions are the queries most likely to end on Google.
- Report leads and calls
next to sessions, so a drop in visits is not mistaken for a drop in business.
Common mistakes
- Panic over CTR. Lower click rates with stable positions are expected. Look at leads before cutting the SEO budget.
- Quoting one number. “Most searches are zero-click” without a study, region and year will not survive a client’s question.
- Hiding the answer. Holding back the key fact to force a click usually means the summary quotes someone else.
- Blocking snippets. Google says a page must be eligible for a snippet to appear as a link in its AI features. A nosnippet rule takes you out of that pool.
- Writing only definitions. A site full of “what is” pages earns impressions and few calls.
Google’s documentation on AI features says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the normal Search Console performance report, under the “Web” search type.
FAQ
What share of Google searches are zero-click?
It depends on the study. SparkToro measured 58.5% of US searches in its 2024 study and 68.01% for January to April 2026, using a different data panel. Always give the source and the period with the number.
Do AI Overviews cause zero-click searches?
They add to them. In Pew Research Center’s March 2025 data, people clicked regular results about half as often when an AI summary appeared. Answer boxes, maps and other features ended searches long before AI summaries existed.
Is SEO still worth it?
Yes, but the goal widens. The page that ranks is also the page AI answers quote, and a quote with your name works even without a click. Our GEO guide explains how to get there.
Where do these terms come from?
Short definitions of zero-click search, AI Overviews and related terms are in our AI search glossary. For how Google builds the answer, see query fan-out.
