Your content ranks number one. Traffic is down 30%. Welcome to 2025.

Google answers the question directly in an AI Overview. The user gets what they need without clicking. Your perfectly optimized article sits there, visible but ignored. You did everything right and got nothing for it.

This is the zero-click search era. And your old content strategy is failing because it was built for a world where ranking meant traffic.

That world is gone.

Why People Also Ask Died

Remember when "People Also Ask" boxes were the prize?

Get featured there and you'd see a traffic spike. Users would click to read more. The expandable questions drove engagement. Every SEO team optimized specifically to capture those spots.

Then AI Overviews launched. Google's LLM-powered answer boxes that appear above everything else. Above paid ads. Above featured snippets. Above People Also Ask. Above organic results.

The AI Overview answers the question comprehensively. Not a snippet. Not a teaser. A full answer with sources cited but not necessarily clicked.

People Also Ask still exists. It just doesn't matter anymore. Users get their answer from the AI Overview and leave. The PAA boxes might as well be invisible.

Traffic to informational content has collapsed across industries. Not because the content got worse. Because users don't need to click anymore to get answers.

The Brand Awareness vs Conversion Split

Here's the strategic choice every content team must make now: Which content are you writing for clicks and which are you writing for visibility?

Some content needs to rank in AI Overviews even if you never get traffic. Brand awareness content. Thought leadership. Category education. You want your company cited as a source. You want prospects to see your brand name when they research the space.

Getting quoted in an AI Overview without a click still has value. It's top-of-funnel positioning. It's credibility building. It's making sure when someone finally is ready to evaluate solutions, they remember seeing your name.

But you can't build a content strategy entirely on that. You need traffic that converts. Which means you need content types that AI can't fully answer.

Product comparisons require clicking. An AI Overview can say "these are the top five options" but it can't give you the detailed feature matrix. Users click for that.

Implementation guides require clicking. An AI can give you high-level steps but users need the specifics. Screenshots. Code examples. Actual documentation.

Pricing information requires clicking. Some companies share pricing publicly and some don't. AI Overviews can't force transparency. Users have to visit your site.

Strategic content planning now requires classifying every piece: Is this brand visibility content or conversion traffic content? Different goals. Different optimization. Different success metrics.

Traffic Classification Is a Mess

Measuring all this is harder than it should be.

Direct traffic includes actual direct visitors. Also includes AI-driven search clicks that platforms haven't figured out how to classify properly. Also includes dark social. Also includes tracking failures.

Google still classifies some AI Mode clicks as direct traffic instead of organic. ChatGPT links show up as referral. Perplexity traffic might be direct or referral depending on how the user accessed the link.

Your GA4 reports show organic traffic declining and direct traffic increasing. Is that because more people bookmark your site? Or because AI search traffic gets miscategorized? You genuinely don't know.

The honest answer is that clean traffic attribution is probably impossible now. Too many sources. Too many ways users find content. Too many platforms that don't pass referral data properly.

What you can measure: Conversion rate by traffic source. Time on page. Scroll depth. Actions taken. The behavioral metrics that indicate quality traffic regardless of where it came from.

You can't control how platforms classify your traffic. You can control whether that traffic does anything valuable when it arrives.

Writing for High-Intent Searches

The content that still gets clicks is content that implies action.

"How to choose" articles still drive traffic. The query itself suggests the user is evaluating options. AI can provide a framework but users want detailed analysis before they decide.

"Alternative to [competitor]" searches convert. Users searching this way are already in-market. They're dissatisfied with their current solution. They have budget. They have urgency. AI Overviews list alternatives but users click through to understand differentiation.

"Pricing" searches convert. Price comparison requires visiting multiple sites. AI can't aggregate real-time pricing across vendors. Users click.

"Integration" and "implementation" searches convert. These are post-purchase or late-stage evaluation queries. Technical documentation isn't fully available to LLMs in most cases. Users need to visit source documentation.

The pattern is clear: Informational queries get answered in AI Overviews. Commercial and technical queries require clicks.

Shift content production toward commercial and technical content. Reduce investment in pure informational content that will never drive traffic again.

SERP Features Still Matter (Sort Of)

Featured snippets lost their prime position but they're not worthless.

When an AI Overview cites your content as a source, that's a featured snippet by another name. You're being positioned as authoritative even without the click.

The strategic play is to optimize for being cited, not for being clicked. That means clear, concise answers. Strong source authority. Updated information. The same optimization that won featured snippets still works—it just delivers different value now.

You won't see traffic spikes. You will see brand lift. Users remember sources. If your brand appears as a citation consistently, that builds trust even without immediate conversion.

This matters most for newer companies or lesser-known brands. Being cited alongside established competitors signals credibility. It's earned media in the age of AI.

Measuring Success Without Clicks

CTR is falling across industries. Stop using it as your primary KPI unless you want to feel bad about metrics you can't control.

Impression share matters more now. Are you showing up in AI Overviews? Are you cited as a source? Are you visible in SERP features even if users don't click?

Track brand search volume. If your non-click content is working, people should remember your brand and search for it directly later. Delayed attribution but still measurable.

Track conversion rate from organic traffic, not total traffic volume. Lower traffic that converts at 5% is worth more than high traffic that converts at 0.5%. Quality over quantity actually means something now.

The zero-click era killed vanity metrics. Good riddance. Now we measure what matters: Does search visibility lead to revenue, even if the path isn't linear anymore?

It does. The attribution is just messier than we'd like.

Master Modern SEO at ACE

The rules changed. Your strategy needs to change too. The Academy of Continuing Education teaches ambitious marketers how to build content strategies that work in the zero-click search era. Stop chasing traffic that doesn't convert. Start building visibility that drives revenue. Join ACE today.