How to Measure Success in a Zero-Click World

If you have looked at your Google Analytics lately, or glanced at your Search Console data, you might have noticed something unsettling. Your rankings are steady. In fact, for some of your “money” keywords, you might be sitting pretty in the top three positions. You have done everything right: the technical foundation is solid, the content is there, and the backlinks are clean.

But the traffic? It’s not climbing. In fact, if you look closely, it might even be dipping slightly.

Ten years ago, this would have been a five-alarm fire. It would mean something was broken. It would mean a penalty, a technical glitch, or a competitor stealing your lunch. But in 2026, it often means something entirely different: Google is doing its job too well.

We are firmly in the era of the “Zero-Click” search. With the aggressive rollout of AI Overviews (formerly SGE), massive Knowledge Panels, and direct answers, users are getting exactly what they need without ever leaving the search results page.

This is a terrifying prospect if your entire digital strategy is built on a single, fragile metric: Click-Through Rate (CTR).

The Old Game vs. The New Reality

To understand why CTR is dying, we need to look at how the rules of the game have changed. It is not that search is dying; it is that the contract between Google and the publisher has been rewritten.

The Old Game

For two decades, the deal was simple.

1. You create content.
2. Google indexes it.
3. Users search for it.
4. Google sends the user to your website to read it.

In this world, CTR was king. It was a predictable, linear funnel. If you ranked #1, you could expect ~30% of the clicks. If you ranked #5, maybe 5%. The math was easy: More rankings equalled more traffic, which equalled more revenue.

The New Reality

Today, Google doesn’t want to be the signpost; it wants to be the destination. They are under pressure to keep users on their platform to serve more ads and gather more data.

Consider a user searching for: “How to unclog a dishwasher filter.”

• The Old Result: A list of links to cleaning blogs. The user clicks one, waits for it to load, dismisses a cookie pop-up, scrolls past a life story about the author’s grandmother, and finally finds the answer.
• The AI Result: A neat, AI-generated bulleted list right at the top of the search page. It tells you exactly how to unscrew the filter, wash it, and replace it.

The user is happy. They got their answer in four seconds. But you? You wrote the content that Google’s AI trained on. You provided the expertise. And you got… zero clicks.

Does this mean SEO is dead? Absolutely not. It means SEO has evolved from a traffic-generation game into a brand-building and influence game. This is where Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) becomes the new battleground. It is not about getting the click; it is about being the source.

Why “Zero-Click” Isn’t Zero Value

This is the mental shift we need to make. Just because a user didn’t click your link doesn’t mean you didn’t influence them.

Think about traditional advertising for a second. When you drive past a billboard for a new car, you don’t tap it. You don’t “click through” to a landing page right there on the M60. But the seed is planted. Next time you are in the market for a car, that brand is top of mind.

SEO in 2026 is becoming more like that billboard. It is about Share of Voice and Brand Authority.

If a user searches for “Best CRM for small business” and sees your brand mentioned in the AI Overview, then sees your brand in the “People Also Ask” box, and then sees your brand ranking #3… they are going to remember you. They trust you because Google—the arbiter of truth for most people—has cited you.

They might not click right now. But when they are ready to buy, they won’t search for “Best CRM” again. They will search for your brand name. This shift in behaviour is something we have been tracking closely; for a deeper dive, check out our insights on GEO: The New Rules of Getting Found Online.

How We Measure Success Now

If we can’t rely solely on the “Users” column in Analytics to prove ROI, what should we be looking at? Here are the four metrics that actually matter in a Zero-Click world.

1. Share of Voice (SOV) & Pixel Height

Rankings are no longer just about “Position 1.” You can be Position 1 organically and still be halfway down the page, buried under Sponsored Shopping ads, a Local Map Pack, and a massive AI snapshot.

We need to measure Share of Voice. This involves asking different questions:

• How often does your brand appear in the AI Overview citation links?
• Do you own the “Featured Snippet”?
• Are you present in the “Visual Search” carousel?

We use advanced tracking tools to measure your Pixel Height—literally, how many pixels of screen real estate your brand owns on critical search terms. If you are the cited source in an AI answer, that is a massive win for brand authority, even if it doesn’t result in an immediate click. It positions you as the source of truth for your industry.

2. “Downstream” Traffic Quality

Here is the silver lining of the AI revolution: The clicks you do get are worth significantly more.

The “tyre kickers”—the people who just want a quick definition, a date, or a simple fact—are staying on Google. They aren’t clogging up your server, they aren’t skewing your bounce rate, and they aren’t wasting your sales team’s time.

The people who do click through to your site in 2026 are looking for depth. They want the nuanced opinion, the deep-dive case study, or the actual product. They are “high-intent” users.

• The Metric: Look at Engagement Rate and Conversion Rate, not just Session count.
• The Win: You might see 10% less traffic overall, but if your conversion rate jumps by 15% because the traffic is higher quality, you are making more money.

This is why pairing SEO with conversion rate optimisation is crucial. When you get that precious click, you have to make it count.

3. Brand Search Volume

This is the ultimate lagging indicator of SEO success.

If your “top of funnel” informational content is doing its job—appearing in AI snapshots, answering questions, being helpful—users will start to trust you. Eventually, they will stop searching for generic terms and start searching for you.

• The Metric: Track the search volume for your Brand Name over time via Search Console or Google Trends.
• The Win: If searches for “Platform81” (or your company name) are trending up while generic traffic is flat, it means your SEO strategy is building a brand, not just renting temporary visibility.

4. Assisted Conversions

This is where attribution gets messy (but essential).

A user might see your answer in an AI Overview on their phone during their morning commute. They don’t click. But that evening, they remember your brand name, type it directly into their browser on their laptop, and fill out a contact form.

In a traditional “Last Click” attribution model, SEO gets zero credit for that sale. Direct traffic gets all the glory.

• The Metric: We look at Assisted Conversions in GA4.
• The Win: This shows us how many times Organic Search played a role in the middle of the journey, even if it wasn’t the final click. It proves that your investment in SEO consultancy is feeding the funnel, even if the AI is stealing the final interaction.

How We Pivot Your Strategy

We aren’t just sitting back and accepting lower traffic. That’s not our style. We are pivoting our strategy to win in this new environment. Here is what we are doing differently for our clients right now.

1. Optimising for “Information Gain”

If your blog post is just a rehash of the top 5 results, AI will chew it up and spit it out. It has no reason to cite you because you haven’t added anything new.

To get the click (or the citation), we need to provide Information Gain. This means adding something new to the conversation that the AI can’t hallucinate or scrape from Wikipedia.

• Original data and research.
• Contrarian opinions or unique “takes” on industry trends.
• Human stories and case studies.
• Quotes from your internal experts.

We are moving away from generic “What is X?” content and doubling down on authoritative content marketing that demonstrates real expertise. AI can’t fake experience.

2. Owning the “Middle of the Funnel”

Top-of-funnel questions (“What is a mortgage?”) are being eaten by AI. There is no point fighting for them unless you have a massive budget.

We are shifting focus to the Middle and Bottom of the Funnel.

• “Best mortgage broker for self-employed in Stockport.”
• “HubSpot vs Salesforce for small agency pricing.”
• “Emergency plumber reviews Bromsgrove.”

These are complex, high-stakes queries where users don’t trust an AI summary. They want to read real reviews, see real faces, and compare real options. By dominating these “money pages” with robust technical optimisation, we capture the traffic that actually converts.

3. “Digital PR” is Now Just SEO

Google’s AI is looking for entities it can trust. How does it know who to trust? By looking at who else trusts you.

If your brand is mentioned in industry news, cited in local press, or linked to from authoritative associations, Google’s Knowledge Graph flags you as a “real” entity.

We are doubling down on Digital PR and strategic link building—not just for the “link juice,” but to build that entity authority. We want Google’s AI to say, “According to [Your Brand], the leading experts in [Your Field]…”

4. Structured Data: Speaking the AI’s Language

AI agents don’t “read” pages like humans do; they parse data. If your site is just a wall of text, the AI might miss the key details.

We are implementing advanced Schema markup to explicitly tell the search engines what your content is about. We tag the author, the citation, the video, the FAQ, and the service offering. This is like handing the AI a cheat sheet, increasing the odds that it pulls your data into the answer box.

It’s a Mindset Choice, Not a Crisis

Look, change is scary. We get it. It’s unnerving to see the metrics we’ve relied on for decades start to wobble.

But this isn’t the death of SEO. It’s the maturation of it. As our SEO Lead discussed recently, AI is reshaping search, and the era of “tricking” Google into sending you traffic is over.

The future belongs to businesses that are willing to build genuine authority. It belongs to brands that provide such undeniable value through unique data, deep expertise, and real human experience that Google’s AI has no choice but to cite them.

Our job as your agency isn’t just to chase clicks anymore. It’s to ensure that when your potential customers ask a question, whether they ask Google, ChatGPT, or Siri, you are the answer.

If you’re reading this and feeling like your current SEO reports aren’t telling the full story, or if you’re worried about where your traffic has gone, don’t panic. The value is likely still there; we just need to look for it in different places.

Let’s have a brew and a proper chat about it. Get in touch with our SEO team, and let’s build a strategy that measures what actually matters: your growth.