Google zero-click searches hit 68% in early 2026: Study

Google searches concluded without a click on 68.01% of occasions in the U.S. between January and April 2026, a significant increase from 60.45% in 2024, according to research by SparkToro utilizing Similarweb clickstream data. This marks a 7.56-point rise in zero-click searches over two years. The proportion of searches resulting in any click, whether to organic listings, paid advertisements, or Google's own properties like Maps and YouTube, declined by 9.51 percentage points between 2024 and 2026, representing a 22.9% decrease. Concurrently, searches that led to a subsequent search within Google increased by 7.2 percentage points during the same period. SparkToro attributes this trend to Google's enhanced capability to provide direct answers within search results and its strategy to encourage users to refine or continue their queries on the platform. The research suggests that Google's AI Overviews are a likely contributor to the surge in zero-click searches, appearing on over 20% of searches and causing click-through rates to drop by nearly 60% when present. While Google's AI Mode had a more limited role during the study period, accounting for only 0.34% of searches, its rapid growth, with over 1 billion monthly users reported by Google at I/O 2026, indicates its potential to substantially influence future search behavior.