The definition
A zero-click search resolves on the results page itself, via a featured snippet, an AI Overview, the map pack, or the answer being displayed directly. The searcher gets what they needed without clicking through.
AI Overviews and assistant answers have accelerated this considerably.
Why it is not simply bad
Traffic is not the only outcome that matters. A zero-click result that shows your business as the recommended option, with your phone number, can produce a call without a single session in analytics.
What it does break is measurement that assumes visibility equals visits. If your only metric is organic sessions, you will read a successful quarter as a failure.
What to do about it
Measure presence, rather than only traffic. That is the argument for tracking whether you appear in answers at all, and for treating a call that never touched your website as a real outcome rather than an unattributed anomaly.
Check it yourself
Search a question your customers ask and see whether the answer resolves on the results page. Count how far you have to scroll before a website link appears.
Then ask whether your business appears anywhere in what resolved above that point.
See where you actually stand
A free Visibility Check runs twelve real buying questions for your category across three surfaces.
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