It matters because a growing share of searches are now answered without a click to any website. The Pew Research Center (2025), analyzing roughly 69,000 real Google searches, found that when an AI Overview is present, users click a traditional result only about 8% of the time, versus 15% without one — a relative drop of about 47%. SparkToro’s clickstream research puts the share of US Google searches that end with zero clicks at around 60%. Being named inside the AI answer is becoming the new equivalent of ranking first — and Seer Interactive found that brands cited in AI Overviews earn roughly 35% more organic clicks than comparable brands that are not cited.