Published 2026-09-05 · Last updated 2026-09-05
Roughly two thirds of US Google searches now end without a click. SparkToro, using a Similarweb panel covering January to April 2026, put the figure at 68.01%. For a service business, the goal shifts. Instead of winning a click that may never come, the job is to be the answer Google shows and to make calling or booking possible from wherever the customer is reading.
How big is zero-click, and how fast did it grow?
SparkToro's 2026 analysis found 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click. The same source puts the zero-click share at roughly 45% in 2016. Over ten years, the share of searches that send anyone anywhere fell from more than half to under a third.
The sharpest recent move was in news. Similarweb data reported by Search Engine Roundtable in July 2025 showed the zero-click share for news-related searches rising from 56% in May 2024, the month AI Overviews launched, to 69% in May 2025. Organic traffic to news sites fell from over 2.3 billion visits at the mid-2024 peak to under 1.7 billion.
Why do searches end without a click?
Because the answer is on the results page. Google shows hours, phone numbers, map pins, review stars, and now AI summaries before any link. The Pew Research Center surveyed 5,119 US adults in February 2026 and found 60% had read the AI summaries at the top of search results, 30% had not, and adults 65 and older were the least likely to have read them.
That is the customer's side of it. If the summary or the map card already says who you are, where you work, and what your rating is, a lot of people have what they need. The click was never the goal. The call or the booking was.
Semrush's tracking of more than 10 million keywords from January to November 2025 adds the where. AI Overviews appeared on 15.69% of tracked queries by November 2025, having peaked at 24.61% in July 2025. Local-intent categories showed under 3% saturation. On the searches that matter to a local trade, the map pack still does most of the work.
What does a zero-click search look like for a local service?
Picture a homeowner with a leaking water heater. BrightLocal's 2026 statistics roundup reports that 73% of local searches start on a mobile device, that 46% of consumers always or often add 'near me' to a search, and that 46% of Google searches have local intent, a figure BrightLocal attributes to Google's 2018 research.
That homeowner types 'water heater repair near me' on a phone, sees three map results with stars and a call button, and taps one. No website visit registered. From the site's analytics, nothing happened. From the business's point of view, the phone rang.
| What the customer sees on the results page | Where it comes from | What you control |
|---|---|---|
| Map pin, hours, and call button | Your business profile | Category, hours, phone, service area |
| Star rating and review snippets | Reviews on Google and other platforms | Asking for reviews and replying to them |
| AI summary naming a company | Pages the AI can read and cite | Clear service pages with your name and towns in the text |
| A direct booking or quote request | Booking links the profile or site exposes | A booking path that works on a phone |
So what is the plan?
Shift the target from 'get the click' to 'be the answer and be easy to call'. That means treating the results page as your first page, not your website.
- Be the answer. Write service pages that state plainly what you do, where, and for what kind of customer, so a summary that draws on them carries your name.
- Be present where the answer is assembled. A complete profile, current hours, and one phone number that gets answered.
- Be easy to call. The call button on the results page is the conversion. If it rings to voicemail, the zero-click search became a zero-call search.
- Be bookable. When a customer wants to skip the call, a booking link on the profile and the site closes the loop.
- Measure calls and bookings, not visits. Site traffic undercounts a zero-click world by design.
Does the website still matter?
Yes, for two reasons. BrightLocal's 2025 figure, carried in its 2026 roundup, is that only 40% of small businesses have a dedicated website. A business without one is invisible to the summary that reads pages and to the customer who wants to see a job photo before calling.
The second reason is the people who still click. When under a third of searches send a visitor, those visitors have already read the summary and the reviews and want more: a price range, a process, proof. A slow or thin site loses the most decided customers on the whole results page.
So the website's job changes. It is no longer the front door for everyone. It is the back room for the people who want to check your work before they commit, and it has to be ready for them on a phone, in the time it takes to read a map card.
Common questions
Is 68% zero-click the same as 68% of my customers never seeing me?
No. Many of those searches ended on a map card or a call button that belongs to a business. Zero-click measures website visits, not customer contact.
Should I stop paying attention to website traffic?
Track it, but stop treating it as the scoreboard. Count calls, form fills, and bookings against the traffic that produced them.
Do older customers use AI summaries?
Less. Pew's February 2026 survey found adults 65 and older were the least likely to have read them, which is a reason to keep the phone number and map listing accurate for the customers who go straight to the call.
