Glossary
What is Zero-click search?
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Zero-click search denotes queries in which the user receives the answer directly on the results page or in the AI answer, without visiting a website.
Google AI Overviews, featured snippets and the answers of ChatGPT and Perplexity deliver the answer on the spot. Convenient for the asker; for the website it means: the contact moves from the click into the answer, and visibility belongs to whoever is cited, not whoever ranks.
The consequence for content: sentences that answer a question directly and verifiably are adopted; long introductions are not. Optimising only for the click loses the contact at the moment the answer does without it.
Why it matters for the mid-market
Zero-click shifts the value from traffic to citation: even without a click, the mention remains a contact, because decision-makers read the source. Whoever is cited stays in the conversation; whoever only ranks disappears behind the answer.