(2025-05-19) Fishkin Zero Clicks Does Not Mean Zero Sales

Rand Fishkin: Zero Clicks Does Not Mean Zero Sales. The new world of a zero-click web, where search engines, AI tools, and social networks hoard traffic and send fewer and fewer visits out is scary. For a lot of businesses, especially those in publishing or those funded by CPM ads, it’s gonna get ugly. A world of declining traffic means many of us need to evolve.

But, it does not mean we no longer:
need a website or email list
need to publish content
need to expend effort marketing that content on search engines, AI tools, and social networks

In fact, to have success on the web, you need those things more than ever.

traffic was always a vanity metric—sales are what really matter. What’s changed is how (and where!) you optimize for them.

I’m gonna use this example of of French Florist. They they do really lovely, beautiful customized flower deliveries, work with a bunch of high quality local florists

People are going to Google and saying, does French florist delivered to Ohio?
I don’t have to go to the site and, you know, click around the contact and about and delivery details. I just like asking Google. And I don’t have to go and get inspired by ideas on their website. I follow them on Instagram.
They have, like, ten thousand followers on Instagram, right, who see their posts and so they’re like, oh, I like this particular flower set. Lots of views, no traffic. They go to ChatGPT and they say, hey, what are the best flower options for my mom who’s in her sixties? She likes mid century design and she likes simple decor.
Boom. There you go. Right? You you get you get the answers. You don’t have to go and visit until it is time to actually transact, and then you still go to the website.

which informs the social content and the content that search engines put up and the content that AI tools give us answers.

Two big differences. One, optimizing for traffic is straight up dumb. It it’s just a bad idea. It doesn’t make sense. And number two, the way to improve is not to get more visits to the website, which was the way that we sort of pounded on things in in twenty twelve.

The way to improve is to improve your marketing and the experiences people have off of your website. So if I if I see a search like, what are the best options for high quality flower deliveries in Ohio?
I wanna change change that search. I wanna get more people searching for my brand.

I’m trying to influence the searches. I wanna show up in this Reddit thread or I want the Reddit threads that say nice things about me to be the ones that show up there, which which again is a different kind of SEO than getting traffic to my own site. And I want Google to include my brand in these people also ask results or or whatever is showing up on the search results.

I want these social networks to have my content so that people are getting inspired and they are getting brand, impressions from me in the social media results. Right? I wanna be in these places. I wanna be at the top of Instagram with all the likes. I wanna be in the Pinterest results with a bunch of pins where people, when they click on those, are coming my site. Right? And I wanna be in the LLM answers.