The answer is the end of the search.
Search used to send you to websites. Now an AI-written answer sits at the top, most people stop there, and almost no one checks where it came from.
Between January and April 2026, 68% of U.S. Google searches ended without a single click, up from 60% in 2024.1 For news searches, the share ending with no click rose from 56% to 69% in the year after Google started showing AI answers at the top, and news publishers lost more than 600 million search visits a month.2 And people don’t check those answers: users click the sources inside Google’s AI summaries in about 1% of visits.3
68% of U.S. Google searches ended without a click in early 2026, up from 60% in 2024 (SparkToro and Similarweb).
The trend
More numbers
clicks to the open web for every 1,000 U.S. Google searches.4
monthly search visits lost by news publishers between mid-2024 and May 2025.2
drop in Google searches that send a click anywhere at all, 2024 to 2026.1
The other side
Searches with no click were common before AI answers, for weather, scores and quick facts, so not every lost click is lost understanding.
of U.S. desktop searches ended with no click under a stricter, desktop-only measure in March 2025. Datos and SparkToro via Search Engine Land ↗
of U.S. browsing went to AI tools in March 2025, against 10.55% for search engines. Datos and SparkToro ↗
Why Anthony still holds this view
Even on the strictest measure the trend is rising, and AI answers now sit inside search itself.
For marketers
Clicks are shrinking, so measure how often you appear and get cited inside AI answers, not only traffic. Publish facts that are easy to quote correctly.
For you
When a search ends at an AI answer, scroll once and open a real source before you rely on it.