Something feels… off about Google Search lately. It’s not broken or dead, but just different from how people used to search online.
If you work in SEO, publishing, or content marketing, you also might’ve noticed it too. Ranking is holding steady, but with zero to no results, making traffic behaviour unpredictable. Pages are still indexed, but visibility feels inconsistent due to low click volume.
This isn’t random, and here are a few key findings that will add a new perspective on how and why Google has changed with time.
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Search Results Are Still There — But Clicks Are Disappearing
If you’re into SEO, you might have noticed that your content might still be on top results, ranking, and indexed, even improving in position, yet clicks and impressions don’t match like they used to be in the past.
It’s not Google or any search engine, but it’s because search behaviour itself has changed. People are now used to getting answers to their queries within the SERPs results with AI overviews rather than visiting websites one by one to find their answers.
With AI-generated summaries, expanded features snippets, and On-SERP explanations, people are getting answers to their questions in a very conversational way, which leads to low search clicks.
Visibility No Longer Means Traffic
If your pages are indexed in the top results, this doesn’t guarantee you will bring traffic to your page or product. With the years, visibility and traffic moved together.
Now they’ve split.
You can be “visible” in:
- AI summaries
- People also ask
- Knowledge-style blocks
…without getting a visit.
That is the main reason some businesses feel like they have lost traffic while still technically ranking.
Google Isn’t Broken — It’s Relearning How People Search
Now, Google is not optimizing for publishers anymore, but it’s focusing more on user satisfaction inside the search experience. Their major goal is to deliver faster answers, with fewer steps and less friction.
From Google’s perspective:
- Fewer clicks ≠ worse experience
- Fewer clicks = task completed
And this is the major shift, which might be good for visitors, but for the publisher, it’s not working as it was meant to be. Publishers are just feeding Google’s AI systems without even expecting to get anything back from Google.
Related: 11 Marketing trends You should know for 2026.
What This Means for Creators and Marketers
For creators and marketers, it’s best to use Google as a trust builder, as with new SEO, the main goal is to get featured there on top results and then capture the demand later in your marketing campaign.
The old SEO playbook was like:
Rank → Get Clicks → Convert
Now the new reality is more like:
Appear → Build Trust → Capture Demand Later
This actually means:
The content you’re publishing must be extractable by AI and must have authority or be backed with your own research to get featured in top results or even in AI overviews.
To build community, email capturing or building followers socially is the key to success, as every click must try to convert into either an email subscriber or just a social follower.
Now, search is becoming top-of-mind marketing, not just a traffic source.
The Bigger Question Most People Aren’t Asking
If people are getting answers to their queries within SERP results, then what role does content play next for publishers? Traffic was the main metric for businesses for their marketing campaigns, but now it feels like influence might become the next.
And that’s the strange part: most people haven’t fully processed it yet.
Final Thought
Google Search isn’t dying.
It’s transforming.
And like every major shift, it feels confusing while it’s happening — not after.
If your traffic feels unstable but your rankings look fine, you’re not alone.
Something strange is happening.
And we’re still in the middle of it.
We partner with awesome companies that offer products that help our readers achieve their goals! If you purchase through our partner links, we get paid for the referral at no additional cost to you! For more information, visit my disclaimer page.
