Digital marketing used to be all about driving as much traffic to your website as possible, but that norm has changed.

Years ago, search engines started shifting the status quo by surfacing ‘answer boxes,’ which deliver desired information without any need for people to click through to an external web page. The rise of AI search – both on dedicated platforms and in the form of Google’s new AI Mode and AI Overviews – has catalysed the shift in user behaviour, so that now, search-referred website visitors have become more rare.

Many have even begun to wonder if AI has killed SEO.

If no one will visit your website anyway, then is there any reason to invest in making sure your content surfaces?

Today, the majority of Google searches end with the user learning what they were looking for right there, on top of the search results, which is why SEO professionals call the phenomenon ‘zero-click search.’ While contending with zero-click search certainly calls for a mindset shift, it doesn’t necessarily mean less exposure for your brand and doesn’t have to mean fewer sales conversions referred by search.

But before we can get into what it means to make peace with zero-click search, we need to first understand how and why we got here.

Zero clicks in historical context

Today, the type of answer box that receives the most attention is the AI Overview (AIO), where AI-generated answers and expandable summaries appear above any of the traditional ‘blue links’ on the search engine results page (SERP). However, there are plenty more types of answer boxes, many of which have existed for years. These include featured snippets, knowledge panels, people also ask (PAA) boxes, and Google Business Profiles.

It’s a shift that’s been brewing for a long time. Marketers with long memories might recall the uproar a decade ago, when Google began presenting song lyrics directly in the SERP, aggregating text sourced from song lyric reference websites and essentially killing the potential for ad revenues in that publishing niche.

What obligation does Google have towards the SEO community, or even publishers? The ability to stop the flow of traffic to websites isn’t to be taken lightly, and the digital marketing ecosystem is on edge.

Over the past ten years, the trend has only continued, with Google surfacing more information in its search results and data studies showing fewer and fewer clickthroughs to websites over time. It was six years ago that SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin announced findings indicating that over half of Google searches resulted in no clicks, and last winter, Bain estimated that 80% of people click on links in their Google search results only 60% of the time.

Over the last two or so years, the rise of AI search has accelerated this trend further, and Google’s rollout of the AI Overview (AIO) at the top of standard search results has been a potent clickthrough killer. A study by Kevin Indig showed a clear increase in zero-click searches after AIOs were officially rolled out in May 2024.

Botify and DemandSphere also investigated the matter and found that as of late 2024, AI Overviews appear in 47% of Google searches, rising to 58.7% for informational queries. AIOs take up nearly half the screen space on desktop devices and nearly 80% on mobile, pushing regular SERP results to ‘below the fold’ and driving zero-click searches to 60% of the total.

Beyond the rise of AI and other answer boxes in Google search, people are also increasingly using LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity for search purposes, which means they aren’t even seeing SERPs at all. The Bain study cited above reported that 68% of LLM users do so to research and summarize information, with 42% asking LLMs for purchase recommendations.

What does this all mean for marketing? Is SEO dead in the water?

SEO isn’t dead, but it is different

Since the dawn of democratised web publishing in the early 2000s, content marketing theory has been all about using your website as a media hub that builds an audience, without necessarily being conversion-focused.

Back then, you knew that not every visitor was going to become a customer, but that was okay, because acquiring traffic from search, social, and other channels was simply how you fed the top of your funnel. You expected some leads to drop out, but you knew that as people interacted with you on your blog, they would start to trust you, subscribe to your email list, and move through your funnel until they were ready to consider and convert, at which point you were top-of-mind.

Today, the conversion process you’re used to, whereby people click on blue links and then you nurture them through your website, has moved down the funnel. Commercial intent searches at the bottom of the funnel are less likely to trigger AIOs and answer boxes, making clickthroughs more common. What’s more, people do sometimes click on source citations in AI search results – possibly more than you think.

A recent TrustRadius survey of tech buyers found that 72% encounter AI Overviews when researching vendors, while 7% have started using other AI services like ChatGPT as part of their information collection journeys. Thankfully, there’s still some healthy scepticism due to AI’s tendency to ‘hallucinate,’ with 90% of buyers indicating that they click through to resources featured in AIOs to verify details. Trust in AI, however, does seem to be growing.

This means you can (and should) still look at search channels, AI-powered and otherwise, to raise brand awareness and grow conversions and revenue, but don’t expect those top-of-funnel audiences to end up on your website.

People are now performing their research on channels that are beyond your own domain. They’re consulting review platforms and community forums, watching TikTok videos, listening to podcasts, and yes, having extended conversations with LLMs. They’re learning about what types of solutions are out there that can alleviate their pain points, and they’re comparing vendors.

Then, once they have a feeling that they want to do business with you, they’ll search for your brand name and click through to your homepage – fully pre-nurtured and ready to close. That’s why today’s marketers look at brand name searches and homepage referrals as the most effective proxy metric for brand visibility in AI search, which is why SEO still matters.

But it also means that the lines between SEO and PR are blurring. Acquiring brand mentions in trusted publications and platforms is now arguably more important than acquiring keyword-optimised backlinks, because it’s these mentions that send signals to AI search that you’re worthy of surfacing in AI answers. Hence the rise of new buzz terms like GEO (generative engine optimisation), AEO (answer engine optimisation), and LEO (language engine optimisation), all of which are just ways of saying ‘SEO for AI search.’

In the age of zero-click search, appearing in SERPs and AI answers is becoming more about widening your footprint in domains, in an effort to raise brand awareness and brand authority. Today it’s not about acquiring low-intent traffic – it’s about being mentioned and recommended.

The funnel has changed shape

We’ve been saying ‘the customer journey is not linear’ for a while, but it bears repeating. For years, thought leaders have been telling us that the new customer journey is self-service. People won’t opt in on squeeze pages or give you their email addresses for nurture until they’re close to making a decision.

Now, with zero-click search, it’s growing even more extreme. Prospects are likely to only visit your website later in the process, so you can’t pixel and retarget them, and you can’t nurture them via on-page chat or email.

This isn’t a temporary blip – it’s a deep-seated shift in the marketing processes. The customer journey begins before you’re aware of it and doesn’t proceed in a predictable manner, so you can’t chart it and strategize top-of-funnel blog posts accordingly.

But reports of the death of SEO have been greatly exaggerated. You can’t map automated multi-channel nurture messaging to a linear journey anymore, but you can still use the funnel model as a way of understanding any given buyer’s personal journey, because it tells you their mindset at different stages.

Armed with this perspective, you can map these stages to intent and build messaging and distribution strategies around that journey, with content that addresses people’s questions appearing in the types of media properties that AI search sees as authoritative.

Your new goal is for prospective customers to learn enough about you – via content discovery on social media, mentions on third party publications, discussions in community platforms, and conversations with AI answers – that they start asking follow-up questions about your brand. If you can send the right signals to the AI engines so they know how to answer accurately and favorably, then your ideal customers will still find their way to you.

SEO needs a new yardstick

People don’t click on links in search results like they used to, but an effective earned media approach – essentially a new hybrid of PR, content promotion, and off-page SEO – is still worth your time. Done correctly, it can provide significant lift to brand awareness, authority, and reputation, leading to shorter sales cycles, better leads, and more revenue.

In this new reality, you can’t easily measure results by tracking clickthroughs or even your rankings for keywords related to your product category and functionalities. As mentioned above, if you’re strictly looking to measure the extent to which people are able to self-nurture using AI search, then you want to look at how many search for your brand name and arrive on your homepage.

As far as the rest of the funnel goes, it’s time for a different standard of measurement, where you optimise for influence rather than direct conversions. For example, if Google Search Console shows that one of your web pages is surfacing nicely in search results (labelled as ‘impressions’ in GSC) but is seeing few clicks, that used to be a problem, whereas now it should be considered a win.

It’s difficult to isolate a direct metric for AI search visibility, so you’ll need to keep an eye on a number of proxy metrics. For example, a rise in appearances in AIOs, LLM summaries, and other AI search results reflects growing discoverability on AI search, which shows that AI models consider your brand to be authoritative.

There’s also a rapidly maturing ecosystem of tools that measure brand rankings and share of voice in AI search, and the best marketers know how to use these signals to determine what tactics are effective at landing those AI answer source citations and what aren’t.

Zero-click search opens new horizons for audience acquisition

Despite any doom-mongering you might see, SEO is still live and kicking. It’s just changed its stripes. And maybe its name. It’s time for marketers to recalibrate their strategies and adjust how they measure success. By changing the way that you view and work with earned media, you can win even without those once-coveted low-intent clicks.

For actionable advice on how to adjust your marketing strategy for today’s zero-click reality, please check out this guide on the InboundJunction blog.

(Image source: Unsplash)