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The zero-click era is changing how audiences discover and consume content, with platforms like Google, social feeds, and AI assistants increasingly delivering answers without users visiting websites.

This short survey (around 10 minutes) aims to understand how this shift is impacting organizations across the industry. Your input will help identify emerging trends, challenges, and opportunities.

Participants will receive early access to the research findings and be entered into a draw to win one of five €50 Amazon vouchers. Responses will remain confidential and anonymized.

What is the zero click era and should publishers be worried?

Whether you believe in a literal zero click future or see the decline as something to be managed, the downward trajectory of search traffic is a reality for a growing number of publishers. What is up for debate is who will be most affected, and how organisations can respond.

Do we lean into ‘Generative Engine Optimisation’ (GEO) in the hopes that the trickle of click throughs from AI overview citations will grow? Or should efforts be focused on creating content that can’t easily be synthesised by AI?

And how bad is the outlook for search traffic, anyway?

Demystifying zero-click

Put simply, zero-click is a future where audiences no longer click on any website links from search engines. 

There are two main drivers of this. The first is users getting synthesised answers from answer engines like ChatGPT. Although efforts are growing to cite and link to original sources to increase the trustworthiness of these answers, it’s likely that eventually users will no longer feel the need to click through to verify what the AI says.

The second driver is Google’s own push into AI overviews. By far the largest search engine, changes made by Google have an outsized impact on the industry and user behaviour. For the majority of search queries made through Google now, users are met by an AI overview at the top, before links are shown below.

Again, as the overviews improve and audiences become more confident in the information presented (please don’t put glue on pizza), the need to click through to websites to verify or seek more information will likely diminish.

The effects of diminishing clicks has already been catastrophic for some publications. Search traffic is a significant revenue stream for a majority of the industry. But it’s been a rocky decade, with multiple headwinds eroding stability of other pillars. 

Few publishers are in good enough shape to weather large drops in revenue from search traffic. But the extent of the impact depends on a few key factors.

How worried should I be?

Well, that depends which sector you’re in. Free-to-read tech publications have made headlines in the last week for brutal drops in traffic of up to 97% – Digital Trends went from 8.5 million clicks a month in 2024 to just 264,861 in less than two years later.

Last week, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch said that Google search is “no longer a meaningful driver of traffic’ to their websites. Google referrals had gone from being a majority a few years ago to dropping to roughly 25% by late last year. Lynch described the introduction of AI overviews as a “death blow” to search traffic, and only sees the decline continuing.

Daily Mail director of SEO and editorial e-commerce Carly Steven told Press Gazette that the rollout of Google’s AI overviews actually hadn’t impacted them much. She noted that they saw clickthrough rates drop significantly when an AI overview appeared. 

“But the frequency of AIOs hasn’t increased in the way many expected. Across the keywords we track, AIO visibility has actually plateaued – around 12% of non‑brand terms on mobile in the UK and 19% in the US, slightly higher on desktop,” she pointed out to Charlotte Tobitt. “Crucially, most of our search traffic comes from branded enquiries, and more than half our users visit directly, so the overall impact on our total traffic remains small.”

This reflects what data recently published by Graphite and Similarweb showed. They demonstrated that SEO traffic is down slightly – in the region of -2.5% – but not dramatically. 

More importantly, traffic changes vary by subject. World news and media actually saw a 4% increase between 2024 and 2025, while topics like cooking saw drops of -15%.

Bauer Media Group’s Global Audience Development Director Stuart Forrest illustrated this at the Definitive AI Forum. 

“Traffic from telling people how long it takes to make a poached egg has probably gone,” he outlined, using an example of one of Bauer’s German cooking websites. “But the inspiration which comes from the content collaboration with Raymond Blanc on how to make the greatest poached egg on avocado toast that you’ll ever make, that provokes a different response… it can’t be synthesised as easily, and I’m not sure as a consumer that I would accept [an AI overview].” 

SEO and Audience Growth Consultant Barry Adams has also been emphatic that much of the hype around zero click is misplaced. He attributes dramatic falls seen by some publications as likely due to updates from Google’s core algorithm updates, and Site Reputation Abuse penalties. 

“I’m all for diversifying traffic sources. Publishers need to be less reliant on Google for their traffic, and have alternative sources of visitors that can sustain their business model,” Adams said in a hard-hitting post on why Google Zero is a lie. 

“But traffic diversification should not come at the expense of SEO. When you take your eye off the Google ball, you’re making a colossal mistake.”

What next?

Rather than AI overviews single-handedly decimating search traffic, search itself is fragmenting. This process has been happening long before the term ‘zero click’ was even coined. Featured Snippets, for example, have been eroding click-throughs for some time, as have efforts made by social media platforms to keep users on their own sites.

ChatGPT isn’t even as much of a threat as some perceive. So far, its usage has been additive to traditional search, rather than replacing. 

However, publishers should be looking to reduce reliance on search traffic for revenue. “You clearly can’t rely on Google as being your primary traffic source,” the Daily Mail’s Carly Steven told Digital Content Next, pointing out that algorithm changes over the years have already proved its volatility as a channel. “If it’s one way for your audience to reach you, that’s fine, but you wouldn’t want to have all your eggs in that basket now.”

Barry Adams told Digital Content Next that online publishing itself has been too much of a free-for-all with brands spending too much time chasing clicks and putting ads on everything.

 “This is a weeding out,” he explained bluntly. “We will lose publishers, there will be casualties, and I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.”

We at MediaVoices are working on a report with Woodwing to find out how other publishers are approaching zero click, SEO and AI overviews.

We’d love to hear your thoughts – there’s a short survey here which asks about the challenges and opportunities you’re seeing with the current shifts. 

Or reply to this email if you have any questions you’d like us to answer or experiences you’d like to share as part of the report.

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