Core concepts
Zero-click search
A zero-click search is one where the person gets their answer without visiting any website. AI answers and search summaries produce many of them, which makes being named inside the answer more valuable than ranking below it.
In more detail
Zero-click behaviour shifts the value of visibility from traffic to recommendation. A buyer who reads that your brand has the longest warranty in the category has been influenced whether or not they clicked.
It also makes the traffic that does arrive more qualified, because the assistant has already done the shortlisting before the click.
How Allswap measures this
Guides that cover this
Related terms
Answer engine
An answer engine is a system that responds to a question with a direct written answer instead of a list of links. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot, Grok and Meta AI are all answer engines.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews is Google's AI-generated summary that appears above the ordinary search results. For many queries it is the first answer a person reads, and the brands it names are seen before any organic link.
AI referral traffic
AI referral traffic is website sessions that arrive from an AI assistant, identified by the referrer the assistant attaches to its links. It usually converts well, because the assistant has already shortlisted before the click.
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