What Is Zero-Click Through and What Does It Mean for Your Business?
Hello and welcome back to AI on the Fly. My name is Ryan Kelly and today I’m going to be answering the question: what is zero-click through?
It’s a great question, and there are some implications behind even asking it that we’ll talk through.
So first, let’s define what it is. A research organization called Gartner cited a study where they essentially said that by the end of 2026, 25% of traffic could disappear from websites, and by the end of 2028, 50% of traffic could be gone.
The zero-click through definition is that people would be making their decisions not from researching and going to websites like we used to do, but instead getting their information directly from the top of Google, from AI overviews, from third party answer engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and the like, where people would not need to click into a website to get the information they desire.
Do I believe that will come true? I don’t know if the 25% by the end of 2026 and the 50% by the end of 2028 are accurate, but I 100% believe that we will see traffic decrease because of the usability and the way the internet now works. Essentially, AI broke the internet and broke the way it used to work.
The adaptation is simply this: if somebody goes in as a user and types in “what is the best Thai food restaurant in Santa Rosa and what is the dish they’re known for,” gone are the days where they would put that long-tail prompt phrase into Google, read all the links, click on them, go to websites, and do all the things. What we’re seeing is an adoption rate moving toward people doing that prompt phrase and then reading the results of the AI overview and making a decision right from there.
So what does this mean? What are the implications of zero-click through?
It means we can no longer give the same weight to measuring traffic to a website. And here’s why. You may experience less traffic to your website, but if you’re being cited as the authoritative source to answer that question, you’re still going to get that conversion. You may still get that phone call, that new client, that new patient. You may sell that widget. You may get them to come to your restaurant.
The idea is that even though traffic is going to disappear, we need to displace the weight of measurement away from traffic and move it over to conversion tracking. Tracking your conversions with clearer attribution is now critical. As presidents of industry, marketing directors, sales managers, and decision makers, we need to be tracking not just the money we’re spending and where we’re spending it, but our efforts, where we’re spending time, and the kind of content we’re writing. That is a big adaptation.
AI really did break and change the internet.
So the definition of zero-click through is people getting their answers from the top of AI overviews on Google, from third party answer engines like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google Gemini, without ever clicking into a website.
The path forward is simply to become a trusted, cited source with experience, expertise, trustworthiness, and authority. So that when AI crawls your content, your blogs, your press releases, your service pages, your social media posts, your captions, and the links you’re referring people to, it sees you as that trusted source locally, regionally, or nationally.
If you found this video helpful, please like the video, subscribe to my channel, and if you have a question, reach out. I’d love to answer it. Until next time, buckle up.