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independence2 unconnected · 1 more author in those circles
standing

contested · 4 claims against 2

applies to

b2b and consumer, no audience needed

outcome not stated

confidence

high

evidence

6 claims · 5 articles · 4 receipts

window

2019-06-18 → 2025-07-24

2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested

Keep spending on search while the clicks remain

The headlines say search is over and the click data says otherwise: organic still takes roughly a dozen clicks for every paid one, and most of the AI answers your buyers see are served inside Google rather than in a chatbot. Buyers also still want several independent sources before spending money. How much of that pool survives is where the numbers here pull apart.

Where this splits

Glen Allsopp reads the remaining click volume as more than enough to build a business on, while SparkToro's clickstream work shows the organic pool falling, half of searches ending without a click, and the largest sites passing on a shrinking share of what they receive.

  1. side 01 · 4 claims

    The remaining organic clicks still support a business

    Glen Allsopp · Rand Fishkin

    1. 1Do not write search off on the strength of AI headlines: ranking in Google still moves far more traffic than anything else available to you, and whether sites are up or down depends on which ones you track.
    2. 2Keep publishing review content even as AI answers absorb clicks, on the reasoning that buyers still want to read several independent sources before spending money and the remaining click volume is enormous.
    3. 3Keep investing in organic search despite the zero-click headlines, because organic still takes an order of magnitude more clicks than paid.
    4. 4Recognise that most of the AI answers your buyers see are served inside Google, not inside a chatbot.

  2. side 02 · 2 claims

    The organic click pool keeps shrinking, plan accordingly

    Amanda Natividad · Rand Fishkin

    1. 1Do not build a plan on the biggest platforms passing traffic onward, since they keep a growing share of what arrives.
    2. 2Plan for the pool of organic clicks to keep shrinking, and expect mobile to be where you lose them.

What it returned

  • 128

    Glen Allsopp's read of 128 documented quotes from 80 public companies is that they are not overwhelmingly positive on SEO, and that many want to play down their reliance on Google in front of investors.

  • 2019

    Jumpshot clickstream data for US Google search in Q1 2019 covered over 150 billion queries: 48.96 percent finished with no click, 7.2 percent of clicks went to paid results, 6.01 percent of all searches ended on an Alphabet property, and 45.03 percent of queries sent a click to the rest of the web, giving 11.6 organic clicks per paid click.

  • 16

    Rand Fishkin puts AI Overviews on about 16 percent of Google result pages while under 0.1 percent of searchers click through to AI Mode, which leaves Google an order of magnitude ahead of every chatbot combined in both regions.

  • Glen Allsopp expects fewer searches to end in a click but says the volume left will still support many businesses. He also warns that a CEO answering an investor question about AI risk is unlikely to admit fear.

Sources

the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

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the second source

Three plays a week, for the phase you are in

No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.

963 corroborated plays to draw from · 3 a week

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