The number that frames everything else: in the United States, about 58% of Google searches end without the person clicking on any site. They find what they needed on the results page and leave.
When an AI-generated overview appears at the top, the figure rises to about 83%. And of the people who see that overview, around 1% click on any of the sources it cites.
On mobile, which is where your traffic is, the no-click share reaches 77%.
This didn’t start with AI. It comes from featured snippets and knowledge panels, and it has been accelerating for years. But AI overviews pushed it to another scale.
The figure almost nobody is looking at
Here’s the interesting part.
When an AI overview appears, clicks don’t fall evenly. A study of hundreds of thousands of keywords found that searches where someone types a brand’s name gain clicks (around 18% more), while generic searches lose about 37%.
Read that again, because it changes the whole strategy.
If someone searches for “communications agency Santiago,” Google builds the answer at the top and that person probably doesn’t reach anyone. If someone searches for your name, they reach you.
And there’s a second finding pointing the same way: even if clicks drop, the ones that survive convert better. The person arrives already informed, because the overview answered the basics. Fewer visits, but warmer ones.
What this means in practice
For fifteen years, SEO consisted of fighting over generic searches. “Women’s shoes Santiago.” “Accountant for small business.” Winning that fight was the whole game.
That game is closing. Not entirely, but it’s closing.
The one opening up is different: getting people to type your name. And that isn’t solved with tags or keywords. It’s solved by having a brand someone remembers well enough to type it.
It’s a little uncomfortable for our industry to admit, but that’s the honest conclusion from the data: brand work is no longer the decoration that comes before SEO. It has become SEO.
Four concrete things
Measure again. If your only metric is organic traffic, you’re going to see a drop and draw the wrong conclusion. Separate traffic from searches for your name from generic traffic. They’re two different businesses with two opposite trends.
Write to be cited, not just to rank. AI overviews extract short, clear answers. A two-line definition, a figure with its source, a concrete fact. That can be extracted. A paragraph that goes around in circles before getting to the point can’t.
Don’t let go of transactional searches. Informational ones (“what is,” “how to”) are the ones that lose the most clicks. Purchase searches still send people. If you’re going to cut effort, you know where.
Count the visits Google Analytics doesn’t see. A good part of your audience is asking about you inside ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini. Those conversations don’t show up on any of your dashboards. Ask the people who contact you how they found you, and write down the answer. It’s the cheapest measurement there is.
The bigger picture
At Mamífero we call SEO Search Experience Optimization, and it’s not a play on words: search stopped being a list of links a while ago.
If your strategy still consists of appearing first on a list, you’re optimizing for a screen most people no longer look at.
What’s left is harder and lasts longer: getting people to search for you.