Like every big story, the arc of the zero-click narrative varies depending on who is telling it. Each of the three sets of protagonists in this tale – search users, Google and content creators – think about zero-click very differently, as explained in this extract from the new MediaVoices report, The Zero-Click Content Shift.
Understanding the different perspectives is important for publishers, both in helping them understand the forces shaping the search ecosystem and helping them decide which digital publishing strategies will best counter the zero-click threat.
The user perspective: utility
Google announced its AI Overviews search feature at its I/O developer conference in May 2024. About a week later, the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, sat down with The Verge’s Nilay Patel to talk about all things search and the future of the web.
His line on introducing AI into Google Search was that it was all about creating value for users – ‘letting Google do the Googling for you’. He said: “The summary we are providing clearly adds value and helps them look at things they may not have otherwise thought about.”
The overall quality of information provided by AI Overviews is up for debate, but the presence of answers at the top of search results pages clearly adds convenience for users.
It’s difficult to fault Google on their value-add logic. Many websites have become difficult to use with intrusive features from cookie consents to massive advertising banners and popups making it ever harder to access articles. As Barry Adams says, “There’s a lot of friction interacting with the web, especially websites you haven’t visited before.”
Nic Newman, author of the Reuters Institute’s Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions report 2026 ,says: “Publishers face new competition from AI answer engines and next generation browsers that are able to summarise and remix content in a way that provides great utility for audiences.”
The shift to answer engines is something Clara Soteras spotlights, noting that short search queries – one or two words – are less likely to spawn an AI Overview. People asking more complex, conversational questions: using four words and including interrogative terms like ‘why’ or ‘how’ increases the likelihood of AI Overviews being returned.
She points out that other chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity AI are serving a similar purpose for users, but that the percentage of referral traffic they are delivering is only 0.2%; tiny in comparison to Google Search.
Citations in AI Overviews are still driving traffic to publisher websites from searchers who want to see more information, but also from users fact-checking AI answers; a rise in search traffic correlates with the launch of ChatGPT. Google has also claimed that users who click through from AI Overviews are more engaged, but there is limited evidence to support this as yet.
The bottom line for users, and the perspective that publishers need to pay attention to, is that improved utility is welcomed.
The Google perspective: users first, publishers second
From the outside, Google’s perspective on zero-click is complicated, except that it’s all about making money for Google.
On the one hand, Google just wants to keep people using its services. The days of ‘Do no evil’ are long gone and Google, under the Alphabet umbrella, is all about winning in an increasingly competitive AI race.
AI Overviews leverage the company’s LLM models to keep users inside the Google advertising ecosystem as much as its search ecosystem.
“Google doesn’t give a shit about your website,” says Barry Adams. “It cares only about its users, and it will do whatever it can to keep users on Google. If that means throwing three quarters of websites into the meat grinder, so be it.”
However, the search giant is walking a tightrope between keeping users happy by increasing utility with AI and avoiding killing off the content creators that feed its new answer engine. In a September 2025 interview with MediaVoices, People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel framed the problem Google is facing with publishers.
He said: “Google’s job is to answer your query however they see fit… The issue that has to be solved for publishers is how do we get compensated for this?”
Sundar Pichai acknowledged this issue immediately after the AI Overviews rollout in his May 2024 interview with The Verge, saying: “If there isn’t a rich ecosystem making unique and useful content, what are you putting together and organising?”
While it’s very easy to question just how much Google cares about publisher content, the search giant is making some moves to deliver more clicks from users’ AI search experience. In updates announced in May 2026, responses in both AI Overviews and AI Mode will highlight whether summaries include information from publications the user subscribes to.
According to a report from NiemanLab, Google claims that in early testing, people were ‘significantly more likely’ to click through to a webpage that had its “Subscribed” label. It also said the new citation feature has been designed to help users ‘quickly access’ content they trust and get more value from their subscriptions.
The company is also piloting paid partnerships and licensing deals with major publishers, including Der Spiegel, The Guardian and The Washington Post; exploring opt-out controls that will allow publishers to opt out of AI Overviews without losing search visibility; and experimenting with personalisation that will identify users’ preferred sources.
The balancing act for Google is to keep users happy, but try to avoid choking off the supply of quality content it needs to serve meaningful answers.
Download the full report, The Zero-Click Content Shift, for free here.
The publisher perspective: seeking clarity
The publisher perspective on zero-click search is, to say the least, polarised.
On team ‘Chicken Little’, there are publishers who genuinely see removing the need for users to click through to their content from search as a ‘death blow’. Publishers heavily dependent on referral traffic and associated programmatic revenues have already seen the sky fall in.
Team ‘Déjà Vu’ sees the fall in referral traffic as the catalyst for just another exercise in managing decline, adding search to a list of shrinking distribution opportunities that already includes print and social media platforms.
There are few, if any, publishers that see the introduction of AI Overviews as a positive; even fewer who think anyone can put the genie back in the bottle. However, there is a consensus building around the idea that publishers will have to adapt to counter the inevitable decline of search referral traffic.
Adapting means different things to different publishers, but giving up on past click addiction is central. Moves to maximise referrals from AI Overviews are on the to-do list, but there is varying confidence in just how effective that will be; better to build direct relationships and revenue than rely on traffic from AI citations.
One other point that almost all publishers agree on is the unfairness of tech companies training their LLMs on their content without permission or compensation. Some of the biggest have done deals to license their content. But, regardless of size, the industry agrees that every AI company has a responsibility to compensate publishers for the content used to train their LLMs, or in Google’s case, allow them to opt out of AI overviews without also opting out of search visibility.
In a March 2026 article for InPublishing, Sajeeda Merali, chair of the UK publisher association, PPA, wrote that the deployment of generative AI has raised fundamentally different issues from previous waves of digital innovation because it relies on the “systematic theft and reuse of copyrighted works at scale.”
Sajeeda was very clear that the PPA’s advocacy is not about resisting technological progress or limiting innovation. “The goal,” she wrote, “was to secure a predictable, pro-competition framework, one which creates growth for publishers and AI moving forward.”
The best bet for publishers is to campaign for a more level playing field, while abandoning any business model predicated on third-party traffic referrals.
This is an extract from the new MediaVoices report, The Zero Click Content Shift. Download it for free below:
This report was researched and written in association with WoodWing.
WoodWing empowers publishing ecosystems by uniting technology with deep industry expertise. For 25+ years, we’ve helped teams create, manage, and deliver content across print and digital channels with greater efficiency and consistency. Our portfolio spans multi-channel production, digital assets, quality, knowledge, and information management. Founded in 2000, we operate globally from our headquarters in the Netherlands.
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