TL;DR

Rand Fishkin, co-founder of SparkToro, has tracked for years how many Google searches end without a click to any website. His June 2026 analysis of Similarweb data found that 68% of US Google searches from January to April 2026 ended without a click, up from around 60% in 2024. His answer, which he calls zero-click marketing, is to stop treating website traffic as the main measure of success and to build influence where audiences already spend their attention. For European brands, that means publishing content that delivers value on the platform itself and measuring brand demand rather than visits alone.

Who Rand Fishkin is and what he argues

Rand Fishkin is co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, an audience-research company. Since at least 2019 he has published clickstream studies on what happens after people search on Google. His argument has been consistent: Google increasingly answers questions on its own results pages, so a growing share of searches never send a visitor to anyone else's website.

Together with SparkToro colleague Amanda Natividad, he has turned that observation into a marketing philosophy. Natividad described zero-click content in 2022 as content that gives standalone value on the platform where it appears, so a click adds to the experience but is not required. In 2026 the two announced a book, Zero Click Marketing: How to Build Brands and Earn Customers on a Traffic-Starved Web, published by Damn Gravity, as reported by PPC Land.

Zero-click search

a search session that ends, or turns into a new search, without the user clicking any result on the page.

What the data shows

SparkToro's 2024 zero-click study, published in July 2024 and based on Datos clickstream data from September 2022 to May 2024, found:

  • 58.5% of US and 59.7% of EU Google searches ended without a click.
  • For every 1,000 Google searches, only 360 clicks in the US and 374 in the EU went to the "open web", meaning websites not owned by Google.
  • Almost 30% of US clicks went to Google-owned properties such as YouTube, Maps and Images.
  • Paid ads accounted for only about 1% of all clicks.

In June 2026 Fishkin published a follow-up, In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click. Using Similarweb data for US searches between January and April 2026, he found that 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click. The share of searches producing at least one click of any kind fell by 9.51 percentage points between 2024 and 2026, a relative drop of 22.9%. Fishkin cites Ahrefs data indicating that AI Overviews appear on more than 20% of searches and reduce click-through rates by nearly 60% where they appear, although his study does not isolate their effect.

He is open about the limits: the 2019, 2024 and 2026 figures come from different data panels, so the trend is approximate, and the 2026 study covers only the US, with European data promised later. The direction, however, is clear and consistent across every dataset he has used.

Why it matters for European brands

Many SMEs still judge marketing by website sessions. If two-thirds of searches end on Google, and AI assistants increasingly answer questions directly, a fall in traffic does not necessarily mean a fall in influence. Fishkin's 2026 post makes the point bluntly: traffic can fall sharply even while revenue rises. The opposite is also true: a brand that is absent from the answers, videos and communities where buyers form opinions will lose demand long before it shows up as lost traffic.

"Replace traffic as a KPI for your digital marketing efforts." — Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

A zero-click playbook

Fishkin's recommendations in the 2026 post translate into a practical sequence for marketing teams:

  1. Change the scoreboard. Stop reporting sessions as the headline metric. Track branded search volume, direct enquiries, sales-qualified leads and revenue, and look at how they move together over time. Fishkin suggests a correlation dashboard rather than a single traffic number.
  2. Research where your audience pays attention. Identify the specific creators, newsletters, podcasts, communities and platforms your buyers follow. In Europe this differs by market and language, so research each audience separately, including diaspora communities such as Chinese-speaking buyers.
  3. Publish natively on platforms you do not own. Write LinkedIn posts, short videos and carousels that deliver the full insight in the post itself. Natividad's advice is to lead with the payoff rather than hold it back for the click.
  4. Promote the brand subtly, not the link. Make sure your name and expertise are memorable in every piece. People who are genuinely interested will search for you later.
  5. Keep your website strong. Fishkin is explicit that the site still matters: its content shapes AI answers and Google's on-page features, and it is where interested buyers land.
  6. Keep SEO where clicks still happen. Branded searches, local queries and high-intent transactional searches still send traffic. Prioritise these over broad informational keywords that Google or AI now answer directly.
  7. Review quarterly. Check which platforms and partners correlate with growth in brand demand and shift budget accordingly.

Limits of the idea

Zero-click marketing is not a reason to abandon measurement. Its weakness is attribution: influence on other platforms is harder to prove than a tracked click, and correlation dashboards require discipline to avoid wishful reading. Clickstream panels also have known blind spots; SparkToro notes, for instance, that the Google mobile app was excluded from the 2026 data and that iPhone coverage was minimal in 2024. Finally, Fishkin's data describes Google in the US and EU on average. In some sectors, especially transactional e-commerce, a meaningful share of searches still lead to clicks, so the right balance depends on your category.

Key takeaways
  • SparkToro data shows 58.5% (US) and 59.7% (EU) of Google searches ended without a click in 2024, and 68% of US searches in early 2026.
  • Fishkin advises replacing traffic as the main KPI with measures of brand demand and revenue.
  • Zero-click content delivers its value on the platform itself, building recognition that leads to later searches.
  • Websites and SEO still matter, especially for branded, local and transactional searches.
  • Data panels differ, so treat year-on-year comparisons as approximate.

FAQ

Does zero-click search mean SEO is dead?
No. Fishkin recommends keeping SEO for branded, local and high-intent transactional searches, and keeping a strong website because its content still feeds AI answers. What changes is the expectation that informational content will reliably deliver visits.
What is the difference between zero-click search and zero-click content?
Zero-click search describes user behaviour: searches that end without a click. Zero-click content is a marketing response: content that delivers full value on the platform where it appears, so your brand benefits even when nobody clicks.
How do we measure success without traffic?
Track branded search volume, direct and referral enquiries, mentions in the communities and media your buyers follow, and pipeline or revenue. Look for correlations between your activity on other platforms and these outcomes over several months.

Sources

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