AI Brings Zero-Click Searches: Fewer Clicks, Better Conversions

In this episode, Meredith’s husband unpacks the rise of “zero-click searches,” where AI summaries reduce website clicks. He explains how website owners—especially photographers—can adapt by focusing on top Google rankings to ensure visibility in AI-driven results. While traffic may decline, the visitors who do click through convert at much higher rates, making SEO more valuable than ever.

Chapter Markers

[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] Welcome to Insider’s Inbox
[0:32] Excitement about AI in SEO
[1:42] Reddit study on ChatGPT using Google
[2:31] How the test revealed Google reliance
[3:40] Introduction to zero-click search
[4:19] Fewer visits but higher conversions
[4:58] Ahrefs study: 23x higher conversions from AI traffic
[5:34] Decoupling impressions from visitors
[6:15] Implications for photographers and local SEO
[7:15] AI results tied to Google rankings

Articles referenced in this episode:
https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1m47avn/chatgpt_plus_is_secretly_googlepowered_my_hidden/
https://ahrefs.com/blog/zero-click-search/
https://ahrefs.com/blog/the-great-decoupling/
https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-search-traffic-conversions-ahrefs/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Meredith's husband: Hey, this is Meredith's husband. I've got some SEO advice for you, but I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it so it makes sense, and most importantly, so you can actually use it.

[00:00:24] You ready? 

[00:00:25] Meredith: I'm ready. 

[00:00:26] Meredith's husband: We're gonna do a little insider's inbox. Ooh. Do you know what that is? We've done a few of these. 

[00:00:31] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:00:31] Meredith's husband: Okay. So stuff that comes to me in my inbox is a, I'm calling myself an SEO insider. Yeah. And I'm sharing some of that knowledge with you. Just the interesting stuff. There's a lot of stuff that's not interesting.

[00:00:42] Not, not useful. Yeah. Some of it is. I think interesting. Some of it is, I think, useful. 

[00:00:48] Meredith: I love how much you love this. 

[00:00:49] Meredith's husband: Yeah, I know. I'm such a dork. 

[00:00:50] Meredith: No, it's not, it's not a dork at all. It's like, it's, it's a passion. It's 

[00:00:55] Meredith's husband: somebody, uh, asked me just recently, I was on a call and they were feeling overwhelmed by all the new AI stuff.

[00:01:02] What? And they said to me, they, they're like, how do you deal with this? Like, how do you. Doesn't this just kill you, exhaust you? And I'm like, what are you talking about? This is the most exciting time in SEO in the last 15 years. I'm so excited. 

[00:01:19] Meredith: I love that about you. Yeah. 

[00:01:21] Meredith's husband: Anyway. Okay, so gonna go over a couple things that I've gotten.

[00:01:25] One is interesting I've talked about before, and it's kind of a new newer development. Yes. I want to include. And then there's something called what they call zero click search, which is interesting. And it is going to apply to website owners and hopefully help you moving forward. Okay. Oh, but first the topic that I wanted to revisit and I got this article, it was summarized in an article, but somebody did a a study and I'm gonna say published it.

[00:01:52] They described it on Reddit. 

[00:01:54] Meredith: On what? 

[00:01:55] Meredith's husband: On Reddit. The website. Reddit, okay. Yeah. And it was, the person described what they did, and I think it was a very good test. They shared the results, I think. Very trustworthy. Assuming that they're being honest. They didn't share screenshots, which makes it a little, would make it a little more trustworthy.

[00:02:12] Meredith: Uhhuh, 

[00:02:13] Meredith's husband: uh, but what they said is they just confirmed that chat. GBT is, is using Google. Okay? Chat, GBT. Says that they use Bing and only Bing. 

[00:02:22] Meredith: Right. 

[00:02:23] Meredith's husband: And I've seen, and I've talked about some studies on this podcast in previous episodes that kind of suggest otherwise. This one, what this person did is they set up a a page on their website and they had it indexed by Google.

[00:02:37] Meredith: Mm-hmm. 

[00:02:37] Meredith's husband: They blocked it from indexing on Bing and other search engines. Oh, interesting. Do, do go, et cetera. And then within a few hours of being indexed on. Google, it started appearing in searches that they did on at GPT. 

[00:02:51] Meredith: Mm-hmm. 

[00:02:51] Meredith's husband: Okay. So there's no way that should happen if it's not in Bing. Right. It should not appear in GPT and there's 

[00:02:58] Meredith: no way Bing could get it from Google.

[00:03:00] Meredith's husband: Bing does that too, but it's not. But the, but this page in particular was not in Bing. So this person went to Bing. A search didn't even to do that. Yeah. You can block things from Bing searched. Yes. Huh. Bing also, years ago, busted because they, they were guilty of taking results from Google. So Bing is its own search engine.

[00:03:18] It's supposed to compete with Google. It's supposed to be different from Google. And Google busted Bing by doing a similar study, documented it very well and red handed Bing. Results were just. Straight up using Google. So I will link to this. Like I said, there's not a lot of documentation here, but just confirms even more so what we are already thinking.

[00:03:40] Okay, so onto this thing called zero click search. Okay, so this is a new phenomenon because more and more people, especially with AI searches now. Go to Google, whether it's AI mode or even the regular, uh, traditional mode. Okay. The AI mode is all AI In traditional search, it's gonna be an AI summary at the top.

[00:04:02] Okay. Oh, right, right. So people, so people can get that summary and then they're done. They get the information they need. That's a, that's zero click search. Oh, they don't click to go to a website. 

[00:04:11] Meredith: Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. They get the info 

[00:04:12] Meredith's husband: they need, even though that info is coming from websites, they don't have to go to visit those info.

[00:04:17] So it's like I said, zero click search. Now, what does this mean for, uh, for people, for you and I for people who have websites? Well, it means that we're probably. If not already going to get fewer visits to our website, 

[00:04:30] Meredith: right? 

[00:04:30] Meredith's husband: Even if our website is doing well, performing well in Google and AI mode, and it's getting lots of visibility, we're gonna get fewer people actually clicking through to visit our site.

[00:04:40] Meredith: Right 

[00:04:41] Meredith's husband: now, you would think right away that, oh, that means I'm gonna get fewer visitors, I'm gonna get fewer leads. That's not necessarily the case because what happens is those few people who do come from those AI modes are very interested. They I see, I see. At a much higher rate. In fact, one of these articles, there's three articles that I'm.

[00:05:01] Kind of summarizing here, I will link to them. One of them says that their traffic, the traffic that they were getting, and this comes from the website called Ah Refs. 

[00:05:11] Meredith: Ah refs, 

[00:05:12] Meredith's husband: yeah, A-H-R-E-F s.com for that website, the test that they did here, the visitors that they got coming through, AI results converted 23 times higher than visitors coming directly.

[00:05:27] From traditional organic search. 

[00:05:30] Meredith: How about 

[00:05:30] Meredith's husband: that? Does that make sense? That is massive. Like that is insanely massive. So if you see your traffic falling, if you use Google Analytics or Google search console to monitor, monitor to monitor, then visitors coming from Google, don't be surprised. If you start to see that declining, that's gonna be the new norm.

[00:05:49] Meredith: Okay, that's good. 

[00:05:49] Meredith's husband: Some people describe this as, uh, decoupling between impressions. And visitors normally, the more impressions you get, the more times Google shows your website, the more visitors you're going to get. In this scenario, you might start getting more impressions and fewer visitors. 

[00:06:06] Meredith: Right. 

[00:06:07] Meredith's husband: Which would normally, for the past 20 years be extremely alarming.

[00:06:11] Right. But now it's gonna be normal. Now. Oh, 

[00:06:13] Meredith: good to know. 

[00:06:14] Meredith's husband: For photographers, what does this mean? Because I don't think yet that. Consumers are going to AI to search for local businesses, but I bet that's gonna be changing. 

[00:06:26] Meredith: I think that's gonna be changing. I mean, 

[00:06:28] Meredith's husband: just by the way, I use ai. Yeah. People, I expect people will be going to their AI search, bot search engine of choice and doing something like what are some, you know, family photographers near me?

[00:06:40] Give me a list. 

[00:06:41] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:06:41] Meredith's husband: And they're in a sample of their work or something like that. 

[00:06:44] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:06:45] Meredith's husband: Now. How do you get into that list? Yeah. Okay. Well. I feel like a broken record at this point. You can take my course on how to do that. I've been talking about that. I 

[00:06:55] Meredith: should take a course. 

[00:06:56] Meredith's husband: I will link that below, or I will again summarize it and say, if you're not at the top of Google for that search, yeah, you're not gonna be an AI results for that search.

[00:07:08] Oh, right. Okay. But my course will go into more details and some more specifics. Right. But that's the big picture. Got 

[00:07:14] Meredith: it. 

[00:07:15] Meredith's husband: In fact, there was another article, which I don't remember, but I do remember reading the headline, something like, uh, 8.6% of the first result in AI overviews come from position Outside the top Rank in Google.

[00:07:30] Huh. And I remember thinking only eight, oh, I think he said six. No, this, this is a fairly, because it was suggesting, hey, a lot of searches are coming from websites that don't rank number one. Oh yeah, 8.6% To me, that's pretty small. 

[00:07:46] Meredith: Yeah, that's seems like only 

[00:07:47] Meredith's husband: 8.6%. 

[00:07:49] Meredith: Yeah. 

[00:07:49] Meredith's husband: Uh, so really, if you're ranked highest on Google, because 

[00:07:53] Meredith: that's like 93, what you have a, yeah, 

[00:07:55] Meredith's husband: you have a, a 90% plus chance of appearing in an AI result.

[00:07:59] So 

[00:07:59] Meredith: yeah, a little, I feel, 

[00:08:01] Meredith's husband: again, I feel like a broken record at this point, but this is what's happening. 

[00:08:05] Meredith: It's not a broken record, it's a record. 

[00:08:08] Meredith's husband: I'm gonna go read some more stuff about SEO. 

[00:08:11] Meredith: I'm not. I know.

[00:08:16] Hey, thank you so much for listening. Uh, we really hope that you find this helpful and useful. And if you do, what you could do for us as a thanks would be to drum roll, please. Yes, leave a review. Yes, everybody says that I know, but it really does make a difference. Take three seconds, leave as many stars.

[00:08:37] Say something really nice about what you like about the podcast, and maybe why other people would like it. It would mean the world to us, especially my husband. That better? All right, I'm gonna try one where I'm not gonna be charming.