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Zero-click searches are searches that end without a click on any result, whether the searcher was satisfied, frustrated or changed the search to try again (SparkToro). In the first four months of 2026, 68.01% of U.S. Google searches ended that way, a rise SparkToro says is "almost certainly driven by the massive growth in AI Overviews" (SparkToro). For healthcare marketers, that means a patient can read about a treatment, compare providers and decide where to book without visiting your site. Curve Compliance helps healthcare brands see and improve how they show up in the answers patients read instead. AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. The managed service is Curve AEO, with a team that handles the strategy and the work.
Want to know whether your brand is named in the answers patients read without clicking? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.
This roundup sits under AI search statistics for healthcare marketers. When the click goes away, the answer itself is the result, and that is what Curve AEO tracks.
Key takeaways
- Most Google searches end without a click. 68.01% in the U.S., January to April 2026 (SparkToro).
- Searchers click regular results about half as often when an AI summary appears. Across all topics, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one (Pew Research Center).
- Almost nobody clicks the summary's own links. That happened on 1% of visits (Pew).
- Being cited still pays. Cited brands get 120% more organic clicks per impression than uncited ones on AI Overview queries (Seer Interactive).
- Branded searches hold up. Branded keywords with AI Overviews saw click-through rates rise 18.68% on average, while non-branded fell 19.98% (Amsive).
- Google disagrees with the decline story. It calls total organic click volume "relatively stable" year over year, without publishing numbers (Google).
- Healthcare is exposed. AI Overviews appear on 48.7% of the page-one Google queries in Conductor's health care set, the most of any industry it studied (Conductor), and on 89% of the healthcare keywords BrightEdge tracks (BrightEdge).
How many searches end without a click
| What was measured | Figure | Panel and period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| U.S. Google searches that ended without a click | 68.01% | Similarweb, January to April 2026 | SparkToro |
| The same rate two years earlier | 60.45% as restated in 2026; the original study reported 58.5% | Datos panel, a different panel | SparkToro; SparkToro |
| The same rate ten years earlier | About 45% | Jumpshot panel | SparkToro |
| Searches with at least one click of any kind | Down 9.51 points over two years, a 22.9% decline | Panel comparison | SparkToro |
| Searchers who perform another search | Up 7.2 points over two years | Panel comparison | SparkToro |
| Searches that went on to AI Mode | 0.34% | January to April 2026 | SparkToro |
| Clicks to the open web per 1,000 U.S. Google searches | 360 | Datos, SparkToro's earlier study | SparkToro |
| Share of clicks that go to Google-owned properties | Almost 30% | Same earlier study | SparkToro |
Read the trend with care. SparkToro says the panels "aren't the same users or devices," so the comparison is "a bit of apples and oranges," and the 2026 data leaves out the Google mobile app, where zero-click rates are likely even higher (SparkToro). Its earlier study found "nearly 2/3rds of all searches stay inside the Google ecosystem after making a query" (SparkToro).
News shows how fast this can move. Similarweb data shows zero-click searches for news-related queries rose from 56% to 69% in the year to May 2025 (Similarweb), and Similarweb reports organic traffic to news sites "has dropped 26% since Google launched AI Overviews" (Similarweb). Those figures cover news queries only, not all searches.
What it means for healthcare marketers: a click is now the exception on Google. Your page can shape the answer and still get no visit, so traffic alone undercounts what your content does.
What AI summaries do to clicks
Pew Research Center tracked the real browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. When a Google search showed an AI summary, users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits, against 15% without one. They clicked a link inside the summary on just 1% of visits, and ended their browsing session on 26% of pages with a summary, against 16% of pages without one (Pew Research Center). Around two-thirds of all searches, with or without a summary, ended with the user browsing elsewhere on Google or leaving without clicking a result.
| Study | Finding | Data | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs | 58% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page when an AI Overview appears | 300,000 keywords, desktop, December 2025 against two years earlier | Ahrefs |
| Seer Interactive | Organic click-through rate on AI Overview queries rose from 1.3% (December 2025) to 2.4% (February 2026) | 53 brands, 5.47 million queries | Seer Interactive |
| Seer Interactive | Cited in the AI Overview: 120% more organic clicks per impression than not cited, but 38% fewer than with no AI Overview | Same dataset | Seer Interactive |
| Amsive | Keywords that trigger AI Overviews: click-through rate down 15.49% on average; non-branded down 19.98%; branded up 18.68% | 700,000 keywords across five industries including healthcare | Amsive |
| BrightEdge | Impressions up over 49% and click-throughs down nearly 30% in AI Overviews' first year | BrightEdge platform data | BrightEdge |
Seer's 2026 update found that the decline it had reported earlier reversed in early 2026, so expect these numbers to keep moving (Seer Interactive). The direction is consistent, though: when an AI Overview appears, fewer people click, and the sites it cites keep more of the clicks that remain.
What it means: being a cited source is now the best way to keep clicks on informational searches, and patients who already know your name still click through. See how to rank in AI Overviews.
What Google says
Google disputes the steep-decline story. Its Head of Search wrote in August 2025 that "total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year" and that Google is "sending slightly more quality clicks to websites than a year ago," without publishing figures (Google). Google also says AI Overviews drive "over 10% increase in usage of Google" in the U.S. and India for the queries that show them (Google), and that its year-over-year query growth rate in Q3 2026 was the highest in five years (Google).
Google's reports do not bear out an earlier forecast so far: Gartner predicted that by 2026 "traditional search engine volume will drop 25%" (Gartner). By Google's account, search is growing, while SparkToro's panels show a larger share of searches ending without a click (SparkToro). Both can be true at once: SparkToro's earlier study noted that because Google's search "pie is growing," the overall traffic Google sends to the open web "remains relatively stable" (SparkToro).
What it means: more searches with fewer clicks per search means more chances to be seen in an answer, and fewer visits from each one.
Zero-click search in healthcare
Health searches carry more AI answers than most. AI Overviews appeared on 48.7% of the page-one Google queries in Conductor's health care set (Conductor) and on 89% of the healthcare keywords BrightEdge tracks. In that tracked set, treatment and procedure queries showed AI Overviews 100% of the time and symptom queries 93%, and BrightEdge says that when treatment pages, symptom guides or condition explainers lose organic traffic while rankings hold steady, AI Overviews are likely the cause (BrightEdge).
Provider searches are different. In its three-year healthcare data, BrightEdge found "near me" and provider-finding queries went to 0% AI Overview coverage in December 2025, and it reads this as Google handing those searches to maps and local results (BrightEdge). Its separate 18-month study, with a different keyword set and different dates, puts "doctor near me" and "urgent care near me" type queries at 11% in the same month (BrightEdge), so expect few or no AI Overviews on these searches. That matters because 55% of patients start their search for a new doctor with some version of "specialty near me" (rater8).
In Conductor's health care traffic data, organic Google drives 42.36% of website visits and AI referrals 0.64%. Conductor says AI referral traffic in health care "fell .34% from May to September 2025," a change it also describes as month-over-month growth slowing, and suggests one possible reason: summaries "more effectively satisfied user needs within the overview itself" (Conductor). Its headline finding is that AI is "replacing your website as the first place customers engage with your brand" (Conductor).
What patients say and what they do differ. In Annenberg's survey, 65% of online health searchers said they always or often keep searching by following links after an AI-generated response, and only 8% rarely or never go beyond it (Annenberg Public Policy Center). Yet 60% of patients who used AI to research providers trusted the summary without verifying it, and 37% of all patients surveyed picked the AI Overview as the part of Google's results they trust most when searching for care (rater8). Pew's browsing data, which records behavior rather than opinion across all topics, shows far fewer clicks.
What it means: on condition and treatment questions, assume the patient reads the AI answer and may stop there. On "near me" questions, AI Overviews are rare, so keep your map listing and reviews strong. See where AI gets healthcare answers.
Zero-click in AI assistants
Chat assistants send few clicks. As of February 2026, ChatGPT searched the web on 34.5% of queries, "meaning most responses still rely on training data alone" (Semrush), and across about 82,000 sites, AI traffic was 0.25% of a site's total traffic on average (Ahrefs).
| What was measured | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Change in the average site's search traffic vs AI traffic, mid-2025 | Search down about 21%, AI up roughly 10 times | Ahrefs |
| Google's traffic vs ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot combined | 210 times more | Ahrefs |
| Google's share of all referral traffic | 39.35% | Ahrefs |
| Growth in ChatGPT outbound referral traffic, January 2025 vs January 2026 (U.S. clickstream) | 206% | Semrush |
| Share of ChatGPT's referral traffic that goes to Google | 21.6% | Semrush |
| Brand locations ChatGPT recommends (more than 350,000 locations of multi-location brands, all industries) | 1.2%, against 35.9% in Google's local 3-Pack | SOCi |
Ahrefs notes that AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks are counted as ordinary search traffic in analytics tools, so AI's real share is understated (Ahrefs). For ChatGPT in detail, see ChatGPT statistics for healthcare marketers.
What it means: in an assistant, being named is the outcome. A patient who reads your name in an answer may book later through a branded search or a direct visit. See how to tie AI search traffic to bookings.
What to measure when clicks fall
- Presence in the answer. Track how often AI Overviews and assistants name and cite you for the questions your patients ask. Clicks follow citations, not rankings alone.
- Stability over time. Citations churn: Ahrefs found 50% to 83% are gone the next day, though about 75% of those return within 20 days, so measure trends, not one check (Ahrefs).
- Branded search and direct visits. When patients see your name in an answer, some search for you by name later.
- Bookings from every source. Count appointments from AI referrals and from branded search together.
- Local accuracy. Keep hours, locations and insurance details right everywhere AI reads them.
How Curve Compliance helps
AI Visibility is a feature in Curve Compliance, and Curve also offers it as a managed service. In Curve, the feature is called AI Visibility (AEO), and the managed service is Curve AEO. Introducing Curve AEO: a service that helps you understand how your brand appears in AI search, with a team that handles the strategy and execution for you.
What You Get with Curve AEO:
- AI Visibility Tracking. See how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers.
- Optimize Your Site for AI. We make technical improvements that help AI assistants find, read, and understand your content.
- Competitive Insights. Understand who's getting recommended instead of you.
- Content Roadmap. Identify gaps and prioritize opportunities to improve performance.
With the managed service, Curve's team sets up your questions, competitors and topics, writes the pages on your roadmap, and makes the technical fixes that help AI assistants read your site. Your clinicians review and approve anything medical before it goes live. Each month, Curve's team walks you through your results on a call and sends a one-page report. Curve's team turns those insights into action: building your strategy, creating and optimizing content, and tracking progress.
It ties AI answers to the visits and bookings they bring you. It's built for healthcare: only the marketing question you track is sent to AI assistants, screened for PHI first, and never anything about a patient. Curve is SOC 2 Type II and signs a BAA on every plan.
In one AI Visibility program we've run, for a HIPAA-focused healthcare software brand, AI assistants named or cited the brand in more than half of their answers to its 40 core buyer questions about five weeks in. Across 184 buyer questions, its site was cited in more AI answers than any competitor's, more than 2.5 times as many as the nearest one.
Built for healthcare marketers, Curve connects the entire patient funnel in one platform: paid ads, web analytics, and now AI search. AI Visibility is available on request: book a call to get started.
Sources (checked November 6, 2026): SparkToro, In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click (June 9, 2026); SparkToro, 2024 Zero-Click Search Study (July 2, 2024); Similarweb, AEO guide (March 16, 2026); Similarweb, GenAI and US publishers; Pew Research Center, AI summaries and clicks (July 22, 2025); Ahrefs, AI Overviews reduce clicks (February 4, 2026); Seer Interactive, CTR 2026 update (April 24, 2026); Amsive, AI Overviews CTR study (April 16, 2025); BrightEdge, one year of AI Overviews (May 14, 2025); Google, AI in Search and clicks (August 6, 2025); Google, Q3 2026 remarks; Google, AI in Search at I/O 2025; Gartner (February 19, 2024); Conductor, Health Care 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks; BrightEdge, healthcare AI Overviews over three years (December 24, 2025); BrightEdge, 18 months of AI Overviews (January 29, 2026); rater8, 2026 Patient Choice Report; Annenberg Public Policy Center (2025); Semrush, ChatGPT traffic analysis (April 2026); Ahrefs, AI traffic growth (June 2025); SOCi, 2026 Local Visibility Index; Ahrefs, citation stability (October 29, 2026).
Frequently Asked Questions
What are zero-click searches?
A zero-click search is one that ends without the searcher clicking any result, because they got an answer on the page, gave up or searched again. SparkToro found 68.01% of Google searches in the United States ended this way in early 2026 (SparkToro).
What percentage of Google searches are zero-click?
In the first four months of 2026, 68.01% of U.S. Google searches ended without a click, based on Similarweb's browser panel, which leaves out the Google app (SparkToro).
Do AI Overviews cause zero-click searches?
They add to them: Pew found users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary against 15% without one (Pew Research Center), and SparkToro ties the recent rise mainly to AI Overviews (SparkToro).
Does Google say clicks are falling?
No. Google says total organic click volume to websites has been relatively stable year over year, but it has not published figures (Google).
Are zero-click searches bad for healthcare websites?
They cut visits on informational questions, but cited brands keep more clicks: Seer found 120% more organic clicks per impression when cited in an AI Overview (Seer Interactive). Branded searches also held up better in Amsive's data (Amsive).
How do you measure visibility when nobody clicks?
Track how often AI answers name and cite your brand for the questions your patients ask, then watch branded searches and bookings. Measure over several weeks, because citations change often.
How can Curve help with zero-click search?
Curve AEO shows how often your brand appears in AI-generated answers and who's getting recommended instead of you. Curve's team turns those insights into action: building your strategy, creating and optimizing content, and tracking progress.
Talk to Curve Compliance
Want to see where your brand stands in the answers patients read without clicking? Book a call to see AI Visibility on your own questions, or to talk about the managed service.