What is a zero-click search?

Zero-click searches are not new. Weather boxes, featured snippets, knowledge panels, and map results have answered questions on the results page for years. AI summaries have made them more common and more complete.

In Search Console, zero-click searches show up as impressions without clicks. In general, Google counts an impression whenever a link to your site appears on the current page of results, whether or not it is scrolled into view, and for most result types counts a click only when it takes the person to a page outside Google. Links inside an AI Overview follow the standard impression rules, and a click on one that leads to an external page counts as a click. A page whose impressions rise while its clicks stay flat may be answering its question on the results page. For the size of the AI effect, the Pew Research Center found in March 2025 browsing data that people clicked a traditional result in 8 percent of visits to a results page with an AI summary, against 15 percent without one.