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Zero-Click Searches Hit an All-Time High in June 2026
New Datos x SparkToro clickstream data shows only 40% of U.S. searches and 40.7% of EU/UK searches sent a click to the open web in June 2026, the lowest share on record.
Key takeaways
- Only 40% of U.S. searches (40.7% EU/UK) sent a click to the open web in June 2026, a record low, per Datos and SparkToro.
- Google-owned properties captured 17.1% of all U.S. searches and 20.4% in the EU/UK, up from 17.1% the prior month.
- Paid clicks dropped sharply between March and June 2026: from 2.3% to 1.3% in the U.S. and 2.4% to 1.4% in the EU/UK.
- Wikipedia jumped from the 7th to the 3rd most-visited domain from search in the EU/UK between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026.
- AI Mode usage has plateaued or dipped in the U.S., while ChatGPT's desktop share in the EU/UK fell by 4 points or more.
The Open Web Just Hit a New Low
The open web lost more ground to Google in June 2026 than at any point on record. The latest Datos x SparkToro Search Report, covered by Harry Clarkson-Bennett at Search Engine Journal, found that just 40% of U.S. searches and 40.7% of EU/UK searches sent a click to the open web that month.
Share of U.S. searches sending a click to the open web, June 2026 (record low)
Datos x SparkToro Search Report, via Search Engine Journal, 2026
The searches that don't leave Google aren't vanishing, they're staying inside Google's own ecosystem. Google-owned properties captured 17.1% of all U.S. searches and 20.4% in the EU/UK, up from 17.1% the previous month in that region. Clarkson-Bennett flags a possible cause: France's AI Overviews rollout landed in July 2026, and AI Mode usage, while still small (0.29% of EU/UK visits versus 0.13% in the U.S.), is expanding on the continent.
Paid Clicks Shrink While Wikipedia Climbs
The stranger data point sits in paid search. Paid clicks fell from 2.3% to 1.3% in the U.S. and from 2.4% to 1.4% in the EU/UK between March and June 2026, even as Google's ad revenue base stays strong. Clarkson-Bennett notes this coincides with the rise in Google-owned property visits, since AI Overviews and AI Mode don't monetize as well as traditional ad interfaces, a pattern that holds in the EU/UK but not yet in the U.S.
Wikipedia is the quiet winner. In the EU/UK it climbed from the seventh most-visited domain from search in Q2 2025 to third in Q2 2026, a shift Clarkson-Bennett calls the antithesis of the zero-click story. Knowledge and AI sites broadly gained ground, and Google itself dropped out of the top 15 most-visited domains in the U.S.
What This Means for Your 2026 Plan
Clickstream data like this is exactly why last-click reporting keeps lying to marketers about where demand actually goes. If you haven't revisited how you weight organic, paid, and AI-surface traffic, our breakdown of marketing attribution models for 2026 budgets is a useful gut check, especially alongside Google's own claim of billions of weekly AI search clicks, a figure it still hasn't backed with data.
For teams tracking whether their own rankings are holding up amid the shrinking open web, a tool like SERPWatcher can at least confirm whether the drop-off is a market-wide trend or a brand-specific problem.
Rebuild your attribution model before Q3 budgets lock in.
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