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2025's zero-click web🖱️

2025's zero-click web🖱️

February 03, 2025

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2025's zero-click web🖱️

Sun’s up and so are we. But we can’t pat ourselves on the back for simply being alive.

We gotta get moving. I figured I’d start the week out talking about the “doomsday” of zero-clicks and turn it around to see ways we can take advantage of how people are less prone to click on links these days.

The Super Bowl Poll below will get us rolling. Then, we'll end with Monday’s Marketing News.

Who will win the Super Bowl (& are you betting)?

Zero-Click Marketing

I’ve got 3 quick stats on zero-click marketing (+ 2 key insights at the end of the post).

47.24% of surveyed users believe zero-click search results are more accurate (Devrix)
In 2025, 65% of Google searches are expected to result in zero clicks (Briskon)
For every 1,000 Google searches in the US, only 360 clicks go to non-Google-owned, non-Google-ad-paying properties (SparkToro)

So the obvious thing to do is just stop putting links in your blogs, emails, video descriptions, podcast notes. Thanks for reading. Umm, there’s more to it, obviously, folks.

Between a Rock & a Hard Place with Zero-Click

You have to drive traffic to your landing pages or home page. But it seems every powerful platform punishes you for inserting links to do so. Or they at least offer consumers ways to avoid clicking your links.

Social platforms absolutely wanna fence in users so they never leave the platform.

Google wants to answer questions in snippets users can scan in five seconds flat.

Then there’s email marketing.

Email open rates are murky now. So you need click data to prove your email campaigns are effective. Plus, clicks give good signals to email mailbox owners like Gmail and Yahoo - these signals improve your deliverability.

However, as more consumers get used to NOT HAVING TO click on links anywhere else on the web, are consumers gonna be less inclined to click on email links?

Maybe email marketers will become more selective about how many links they put in a newsletter. Or perhaps they pile on the links in Monday’s edition and have just one link or zero links in Tuesday’s edition?

This depends on what their readers want. So, it goes back to search. What is the intent of the person searching for information… → what’s the intent of the person opening your email?

Search Intent, Reader Intent, & Zero-Click Marketing

The four main types of search intent are:

Informational
Navigational
Transactional
Commercial

Figuring out what kind of content to create based on these intentions can be done with common sense half the time. For a more exact approach, SEO tools like Moz can dissect user intent precisely.

By lining up your content with the specific intent behind user searches, you increase the likelihood of appearing in zero-click search results.

Featured snippets are the most common form of zero-click results.

To optimize for featured snippets, create content that directly answers common questions related to your industry.

Structure that content with clear headings, bullet points, and concise answers to increase the chances of being selected for these featured search results.

An easy way to do this?

Summarize your older content. Take ten or fifteen articles that are evergreen and rewrite them using the main points, no fluff, and make the points so concise that Ole Man Hemingway couldn’t trim them.

A key thing to remember once you summarize the articles is how do the summaries look on your phone?

Mobile optimization is critical for zero-click searches, especially with voice search still booming.

Knowing this, you can repurpose those evergreen articles even more. Create and embed a 30-second video that summarizes the article. No teases to click any links. Just give the information.

This is tough to swallow. And I wouldn’t do this all the time because it seems crazy. However, if someone is simply searching for information, they are a long way from reading a 3000-word article on your website.

And even further away from making a purchase.

Knowing the right time and place for adding links versus when to lean on no-click marketing tactics is what this boils down to.

Two Zero-Click Marketing Insights from SparkToro

#1 “In our testing, we get about 10 times the reach — 10x — when we have zero click content, meaning a [social media] post that contains no link versus one that does. I’d rather influence 10 times as many people than I would draw traffic from a small percentage.” ~ Some fella at SparkToro (Rand Fishkin)

#2 I love my friend Wil Reynolds who posted this video about how his company’s traffic had dropped 40%, and it seemed like the end of the world, but sales were up 20% because traffic is not the same as conversions. Traffic is not the same as customers. Traffic isn’t even the same as fans. ~ SparkToro

Good insights. Worth testing. Just remember, your brand isn’t SparkToro.

Your audience has different intentions. Different motivations. Different haircuts.

To me, a good way to do some testing on no-click content is to stick all the links at the end of your post / email / article. Not on all of your content! Just enough to test.

At least that way, you can have the undivided attention of your reader instead of them clicking away from your content and maybe never returning to finish your article.

4 ways to measure your marketing without depending on click data, then we’ll eat up Monday’s Marketing News…

Reach: The number of unique users who see your ad
Average Session Duration: The typical amount of time visitors spend on your site
Engagement Rate: How users interact with your ad, including shares and comments
Ad Recall Lift: A measure of how well users remember your ad after exposure