Zero-click search

Search engines have answered simple questions directly for years: the weather, a currency conversion, a football score. The user reads the answer and is done. With AI summaries, the same thing now happens for more complex questions.

The Pew Research Center's 2025 study of US users' browsing found that people ended their browsing session on 26% of visits to Google results pages that had an AI summary, compared with 16% of pages without one, and clicked a traditional result roughly half as often (8% against 15%). Google disputes the conclusion that its AI features reduce the value of traffic to websites.

For search arbitrage the effect arrives from several directions. Publishers relying on organic traffic receive fewer visitors. Arbitrageurs are affected mainly through advertiser behaviour: if fewer searches end in an ad click on the main results page, auction dynamics and budgets shift. And Search-to-search buyers may find some informational queries no longer produce a click to buy.

Not to be confused with zero-click parking, a domain monetisation method in which a visitor to a parked domain is redirected straight to an advertiser.

Think of it like this

It is asking a shop assistant where the batteries are and being handed one from behind the counter. You got what you wanted and never walked down the aisle.