Zero-Click Searches in Healthcare: 2026
Signal Hill Strategies compiled eight published studies of Google search behavior, covering more than 500,000 tracked searches and keywords from 2016 through April 2026, to measure how often health searches now end on Google's own results page. As of the fourth quarter of 2026, the data shows that health is one of the topics where Google answers the most questions itself.
Key Findings
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For most of Google's history, health searches worked like a referral desk. A patient typed a question about a symptom or a procedure, Google listed ten websites, and the patient clicked one to read the answer. Featured snippets and knowledge panels started to change that by putting short answers on the results page. AI Overviews pushed it much further, and health became one of the first fields where Google began writing the answer itself.
Our analysts pulled the long-run zero-click history from SparkToro and Similarweb, AI Overview coverage from BrightEdge, WebFX, and Conductor, and click behavior from Pew Research Center, Ahrefs, and Seer Interactive. We kept each study's own definitions and periods, since each tracker counts keywords and clicks in its own way.
In the following sections, we compare the overall zero-click rate over time, how often health searches show an AI Overview, how coverage differs by medical specialty, and how clicks change when a summary appears.
Most US Google Searches Now End Without a Click
Zero-click searches are older than AI. Clickstream panels have tracked them for a decade, and each new results-page feature has kept a few more searches on Google.
US Google Zero-Click Rate by Study Year (2016 to 2026)
Year | Zero-click rate | Clickstream panel |
2016 | ~45% | Jumpshot |
2019 | ~49% | Jumpshot |
2020 | ~65% | Similarweb |
2024 | 60.45% | Datos |
2026 (Jan to Apr) | 68.01% | Similarweb |
Key Findings
The zero-click share rose 7.56 percentage points between the 2024 and 2026 studies. Because the two years come from different panels, the decade-long climb from about 45% is the steadier signal.
Device type shapes the result. In Similarweb's 2026 panel, 48% of desktop searches ended with no activity at all, while 45.2% of mobile searches produced a click to an outside site.
For a clinic or health publisher, a first-page ranking now reaches fewer readers than the same ranking did a few years ago. Google's separate AI Mode drew only 0.34% of searches in early 2026, so the change is happening on the standard results page.
Health Searches Show AI Overviews About Twice as Often as Average
Google does not treat every subject the same way. Three trackers with different keyword sets all place health near the top of the list for AI-written answers, even where their exact shares differ.
Share of Health Searches With a Google AI Overview (2025)
Study | Period | Sample | Health share | Comparison point |
BrightEdge | Dec 2025 | Tracked healthcare keywords | 89% | 59% in Dec 2023, 84% in Dec 2024 |
WebFX | Jul 2025 | 130,070 US health queries | 51% | About double the all-industry average |
Conductor | 2025 | 13,770 enterprise domains in 10 industries | 48.7% | 25% all-industry average |
Key Findings
Most of BrightEdge's growth came early. Coverage of its healthcare keywords rose 25 percentage points in 2024 and 5 points in 2025, which suggests Google has already placed summaries on most of the health questions it intends to answer this way.
Longer questions draw more summaries. In WebFX's July 2025 sample, health queries of seven words or more triggered an AI Overview 73.9% of the time, compared with 35.8% for one- or two-word queries.
Patients who type a full question about a symptom or treatment are now the searchers most likely to read Google's answer first. With coverage growth slowing, the bigger change in 2026 and 2027 is likely to be in click behavior, not in how often summaries appear.
AI Overview Coverage Varies Widely by Medical Specialty
A single health average hides wide gaps between fields of medicine. Google handles a heart question very differently from a question about mental health, partly because of how it treats sensitive topics.
Healthcare Keywords With an AI Overview by Specialty (December 2023 vs December 2025)
Specialty | Dec 2023 | Dec 2025 | Change (points) |
Genetic/Genomic | 63% | 97% | +34 |
Cardiology | 63% | 96% | +33 |
Urology | 68% | 96% | +28 |
Gastroenterology | 41% | 94% | +53 |
Orthopedics | 63% | 94% | +31 |
Neurology | 64% | 89% | +25 |
Primary Care | 66% | 74% | +8 |
Mental Health/Behavioral | 58% | 63% | +5 |
Eating Disorders | 32% | 63% | +31 |
Key Findings
Gastroenterology made the largest jump, a gain of 53 points in two years. Genetic and genomic keywords reached the highest coverage of any specialty in the data.
Procedure-focused fields now sit in the 90s, while primary care, mental health, and eating disorder keywords trail well behind. By query type, BrightEdge found summaries on every treatment and procedure keyword it tracked, while self-harm, crisis, and addiction searches stayed at 0% in all three years.
Local searches moved the other way. Near-me provider searches went from full AI Overview coverage in December 2023 to 14% in 2024 and none in 2025, so maps and business listings still decide most searches for a nearby doctor, while condition and treatment pages compete with Google's own summary.
Searchers Click Far Less Often When an AI Overview Appears
Seeing a summary changes what people do next. Three research groups measured this in different ways, with panels of real users, Search Console data, and client accounts, and they point in the same direction.
Click Rates With and Without a Google AI Overview (2025)
Study | Measure | Without AI Overview | With AI Overview | With per 100 without |
Pew Research Center (Mar 2025) | Visits with a click on a traditional result | 15% | 8% | 53 |
Ahrefs (Dec 2025) | Position 1 CTR, desktop | 3.9% | 1.6% | 40 |
Seer Interactive (Sep 2025) | Organic CTR | 1.62% | 0.61% | 38 |
Seer Interactive (Sep 2025) | Paid CTR | 13.04% | 6.34% | 49 |
Key Findings
Pew found that 26% of visits to a results page with an AI summary ended the browsing session, compared with 16% of pages with only traditional results. Links inside the summary itself drew a click on 1% of visits.
Being cited in the summary helps, but only a little. Seer Interactive measured a 0.70% organic CTR for brands cited in an AI Overview in the third quarter of 2025, against 0.52% for brands that were not cited.
Ahrefs also found that position 1 CTR on informational keywords without an AI Overview fell from 7.6% in December 2023, so part of the decline reaches beyond summaries alone. Health sites should expect each top ranking to bring fewer visits than it did two years ago.
For patients, the shift means more health answers now arrive as a short summary on Google's page, often before they see who wrote the advice underneath. For hospitals, practices, and health publishers, it means fewer visits from the same rankings, especially on the long symptom and treatment questions that once brought steady traffic.
The broader trend has run in one direction for a decade. Each new results-page feature has kept more searches on Google, and AI Overviews sped that up in health faster than in most other fields. Searches for a nearby provider are the clear exception so far.
So if you run a health website, expect informational pages to earn fewer clicks per ranking than they did before AI Overviews, and local provider searches to hold up better.
Sources
Signal Hill Strategies analysis of eight published studies of Google zero-click rates, AI Overview coverage, and click-through rates, conducted November 7, 2026
BrightEdge, Healthcare AI Overview coverage on Google, 2023 to 2025 (December 2025)
WebFX via Stacker, AI Overviews in healthcare: study of 130,070 health queries (March 2026)
Conductor, 2026 AEO/GEO Benchmarks, via Business Wire (November 2025)
Ahrefs, AI Overviews and click-through rate, 2026 update (February 2026)
Seer Interactive, AI Overview impact on Google CTR, September 2025 update
Methodology
We compiled zero-click rates, AI Overview coverage rates, and click-through rates from eight studies published between July 2025 and June 2026. Each figure is reported as its publisher stated it, with that publisher's own period and sample.
Zero-click history: the 2016 and 2019 rates come from the Jumpshot clickstream panel, 2020 and 2026 from Similarweb's panel, and 2024 from the Datos panel, as listed by Similarweb and SparkToro. The 2026 rate covers US searches from January to April 2026, weights mobile two-thirds and desktop one-third, and excludes the Google mobile app.
AI Overview coverage: BrightEdge figures are snapshots taken December 22 of 2023, 2024, and 2025 and are published as percentages without keyword counts. WebFX analyzed 130,070 US healthcare queries collected in July 2025. Conductor's figure comes from 13,770 enterprise domains across 10 industries.
Click rates: Pew's figures come from 68,879 Google searches made by 900 US adults in March 2025. Ahrefs compared average desktop position 1 CTR for 150,000 keywords with AI Overviews and 150,000 informational keywords without them. Seer Interactive tracked 3,119 search terms across 42 client organizations from June 2024 to September 2025.
Derived figures, such as changes in percentage points and clicks with an AI Overview per 100 clicks without one, were calculated from these data.
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