Zero-click search
also known as: no-click search
A search where the user’s question gets answered directly on the results page or inside a chat answer, with no click to any underlying website required to satisfy it. AI Overviews, AI Mode and answer-engine chat responses are built to produce exactly this outcome, which is precisely why being the cited source inside the answer matters more than ranking below it.
In AI Search API
This is the structural reason to capture the composed answer itself, not just a list of links: a page can be the basis for a zero-click answer and receive no visit at all, while still shaping, or not shaping, what the user was told. Measuring zero-click exposure means reading the actual composed answer and the sources it names, per surface and per query, rather than inferring it from organic traffic alone, which a zero-click result by definition will not show. Absence-is-data covers the other half of the same picture: a query where no AI module triggers at all is not a zero-click loss, and the Envelope records that distinction rather than collapsing both into "no traffic".
Related terms
See it in the product
Every definition here is enforced in the Envelope contract. Run a capture and read the fields yourself.