60% of searches end without a click—now what?

Hey, Paige here!

Before we get into today’s best marketing research… 

In today’s release: 

• 60% of searches are clickless — what to do about it

• One thing you need to cut to boost LI engagement by 30%

• Website traffic still reigns… if you can get it (workaround strategies in the wild)

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DEEP DIVE

Let’s talk about something that’s keeping B2B marketers up at night: the growing black hole of zero-click content. 

Nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click. 

Let that sink in. Your meticulously crafted blog posts and landing pages? More than half your potential readers might never see them.

And if that wasn't keeping you up at night already, our old friends LinkedIn and TikTok are playing hardball — treating external links like a digital plague while rewarding native content that keeps users scrolling in their ecosystems.

Here's what's really going on:

The rules of the game are changing, and fast:

1. Search engines are doing their job—almost too well. Those featured snippets and "People Also Ask" boxes? They're like all-you-can-eat buffets of information, serving answers before anyone even leaves the SERP. 

2. Social platforms are hoarding attention. LinkedIn wants you to write full articles. TikTok wants snappy how-to videos. Instagram? They just want you to never leave. The algorithms are designed to punish external links.

The numbers tell the story: LinkedIn posts without links see 30% higher engagement. 

And TikTok? Their 6% ad engagement rate in 2023 makes other platforms look like ghost towns (largely thanks to its native-first content ecosystem). 

But website traffic is still king, right? 

Well, yes and no. Traffic is fantastic — when you can get it. 

But the plot twist: engagement rate, time spent, and brand lift are staging a coup in this zero-click world. Why? 

Because your audience is snacking on content right where they find it, without ever clicking through to the main course.

Look at what the cool kids are doing:

Gong uses a hybrid approach. They drop on-platform expertise and balance with posts linking to their off-platform content. (Check out those #’s though — zero-click content receives 2x the engagement)

Canva turned LinkedIn into their playground, dropping video walkthroughs directly in-feed. Result? An average of 500K views, without a single "Click here to learn more" in sight.

@canva

Your content 🤝 Canva video library #Canva

So what's a savvy marketer like you to do? Here's your game plan:

Instead of bemoaning the death of pageviews, embrace the shift. Here’s how.

1. Master the art of the snippet. Make your content snackable and digestible, perfect for those Featured Snippets and "People Also Ask" spotlights.

2. Go native or go home. That webinar you're planning? It's not one piece of content – it's a content goldmine. Turn it into LinkedIn wisdom drops, Twitter storytelling, and TikTok gold.

3. Start conversations, not click campaigns. Spark discussions. Ask questions that matter to your audience. Remember: in the attention economy, engagement is the new currency.

4. Rethink your success metrics. Track brand recall through social listening. Monitor those DMs and comment threads. These are your new north stars.

The takeaway: Zero-click content isn't killing marketing — it's evolving it. The winners in 2025 won't be the traffic hunters. They'll be the brands that become part of their audience's daily scroll, showing up where their people already are.

Stop chasing clicks. Start building presence.

Want to dive deeper into this? Hit reply and let me know what's working (or not working) in your zero-click strategy. I read every response.