Adapting Your Search Engine to ‘AI Armageddon’ and ‘Zero Click’ Journeys

AI is upending all sorts of traditions, including how people get information and how they shop. Thanks to AI-powered search engines, users no longer need to visit websites to get news or product information. That change in consumer behavior is leading to big changes in how companies present news and information, and the winners and losers in this fight are being created right now.

Earlier this year, Bain & Company shared research that suggested 80% of consumers rely on AI-powered results for 40% of their Web searches. AI-powered summaries, such as Google’s “AI Overview,” has reduced organic Web traffic by up to 25%, Bain’s survey of 1,100 users found.

Instead of traveling to a website to peruse information, most users are relying on AI-generated summaries instead, the company said in its February report. According to Bain, 60% of Web searches now end without the user even clicking through to another website, which some have taken to calling “zero-click” journeys.

The impact on news sites has also been acute. A June Wall Street Journal story titled “News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools” documented how Business Insider’s website traffic plummeted by 55% from April 2022 and April 2025. The culprit is new AI engines, such as Google’s AI Overview feature and similar offerings from OpenAI, the paper says.

“Chatbots are replacing Google searches, eliminating the need to click on blue links and tanking referrals to news sites,” WSJ reporters Isabella Simonetti and Katherine Blunt wrote in the June story. “As a result, traffic that publishers relied on for years is plummeting.”

Source: Bain & Company

Sales and marketing professionals and news publishers are struggling to adapt to the new AI normal. Without the old reliable stream of traffic from organic Web searches, website operators need new ways to stay relevant. So, how do website operators do that?

Bain recommends that users optimize their content for large language models and invest in new performance metrics. To improve the odds of LLMs, Bain says to lean on “rich, conversational text” and use an “agent-friendly structure” using ordered lists and definitions. Having a “clean, scrapable site” that is fully indexed is also a plus. It also says to go beyond text, and that video and interactive formats can “boost visibility in generative AI search.”

However, there’s only so much one can an organization can do with their own site to cater to LLMs. Bain says that LLMs are also building a picture of an organization and its reputation using “off site” sources. For these, having “earned authority” with prominent citations in external media and “deep customer conversations” in those locations can help an organization score well with the algorithm.

Pew Research came to a similar conclusion as Bain. Its research, which it published last month, showed that users were twice as likely to click on a search result link when they were not presented with an AI-generated summary. It also found that most cited sources in Google AI Overviews are Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit.

(AF Digital Art Studio/Shutterstock)

But it’s not all AI-powered doom-and-gloom. When it comes to shopping, consumers are still spending money on products. According to Adobe Analytics, that traffic to retailer websites from GenAI sources went up a whopping 1,200% in February 2025 compared to July 2024. AI referral traffic is growing by 40% monthly, according to a Scrunch AI analysis of anonymized Web search journeys.

And when users do land on your website, having an AI-powered search engine can make them much more likely to stay. According to Nadjya Ghausi, the chief marketing officer at SearchStax, the search engine has become a strategic driver of growth in the AI era.

“By the time consumers reach your website, they’re already conditioned to zero-click mode,” Ghausi says. “They don’t want to dig. They want to ask. Which means that once they land, your search bar is the experience. If the answer isn’t fast, intuitive and accurate? They’re gone.”

Having a bad search experience can be a deal-breaker in the age of AI. Ghausi recommends no longer treating your search engine like a backend utility but “a core contributor to engagement, conversion and customer satisfaction.”

“It’s your first and final impression,” she says. “It’s where trust is won–or lost.”

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