Journal · Field notes
Why your website traffic went down but your phone didn't
A June 2026 SparkToro study found 68% of US Google searches end without a click, which means your Google Business Profile is now doing more first-contact work than your website.
68 out of every 100 people who searched for your shop on Google last month didn't click on anything.
That's not a rounded estimate. SparkToro published the research in June 2026, drawing on Similarweb clickstream data for US Google searches from January through April. The number is 68.01 percent. In 2024, it was 60.45 percent. In 2016, it was 45 percent.
Every two years, more people skip the click. The main driver right now is Google's AI Overviews: when one of those generated summaries appears at the top of a results page, the click-through rate for everything below it drops by nearly 60 percent. People get the answer without going anywhere.
Google is becoming a walled garden. More queries, fewer exits.
Why is your phone still ringing?
Local businesses are one of the few categories where people still click.
When someone searches "dry cleaner in Brownsburg" or "tire shop open Saturday," they're ready to act. They have a problem. SparkToro's analysis noted that local business queries, branded searches, and high-intent transactional searches are among the search types that still drive clicks to actual websites. The zero-click surge is mostly happening on informational searches: weather, definitions, news, sports scores, how-things-work.
A searcher who wants to drop off shirts or get an oil change has intent that holds.
Even when someone doesn't click, they still form an impression of your shop. Google shows them your Business Profile. Your hours. Your phone number. Your star rating and how many reviews you have. Your photos. Any posts you've made. The Q&A section. None of that comes from your website. Google reads your site once, pulls what it needs, and shows people your profile in its place.
Your Google Business Profile is now doing more first-contact work than your homepage.
What people see when they skip the click
If a searcher skips the click, they're looking at your profile. If those hours are wrong, they think you're closed when you're not. If the last photo you added was in 2021, that's the freshness signal they use to decide whether you're still in business. If you have 11 reviews and the most recent one is from last year, they notice.
The flip side: if your profile is complete, current, and has photos from the last six months, you're doing first-contact work on most of your searchers without them ever touching your website.
Most shop owners built a website, check their website traffic, and panic when traffic drops. Sometimes something is broken. But in 2026, a big part of the drop is Google answering the question before the click happens. The shop is still being found. The website just isn't the destination anymore for that first lookup.
Two things to do this week
Go through your Google Business Profile. Every field: hours (including Sunday hours and holiday exceptions), phone number, website link, business category, services offered, description. Add at least three photos taken in the last six months. Check your Q&A section and answer any open questions. If someone asked "do you take walk-ins?" six months ago and nobody answered, answer it now.
This takes about 20 minutes and is the highest-leverage thing most shop owners can do right now. The people skipping the click are reading this profile.
Start one email list. Even 50 names.
Email is the one channel where Google can't insert itself between you and your customer. You send it, it lands in someone's inbox, and whether they open it is between you and them. No algorithm throttling your reach. No platform changing the rules mid-year. A monthly note about a new service, a seasonal reminder, or a change in hours is yours, delivered directly to people who asked to hear from you.
Shops with 80-person email lists often run more consistent repeat business from that list than from anything else they're doing. It doesn't scale the way ads do. It compounds differently.
A dry cleaner in Brownsburg called me in March. Website traffic was down 23 percent, year over year. He'd changed nothing: same location, same hours, same prices, same Tuesday regulars.
We looked at his call volume. Flat. His foot traffic. Slightly up. Revenue. Up.
People searched, read his profile, and called. They bypassed the website for that first lookup.
He updated his photos that week. Fixed a typo in his hours. That's it.
A few weeks later, a customer mentioned she'd found him by searching at 6 PM on a Wednesday. She saw he was open until 7. She brought in five coats. She'd never seen his website.
She didn't need to.
Sources
| # | Source | What it backed up |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click — SparkToro | 68.01% zero-click stat for Jan–Apr 2026; historical growth from 45% in 2016; local search still gets clicks. Published June 8, 2026 by Rand Fishkin. |
| 2 | Google zero-click searches reach 68% in early 2026 — Search Engine Land | Confirms SparkToro/Similarweb methodology; AI Overviews appear on 20%+ of searches. |
| 3 | AI Overviews reduce CTR — Ahrefs | When AI Overviews appear, click-through rate drops by nearly 60%. |
| 4 | Your local rankings look fine. So why are calls disappearing? — Search Engine Land | Local packs showing fewer businesses; drops in local visibility despite holding rank. Published February 2026. |