Insights · Field note · Growth and AI visibility
AI Mode and the 93 percent zero-click session
On Google’s conversational surface the answer is the whole experience. What the Semrush measurement shows and what it changes.
Semrush measured a zero-click rate of about 93 percent for Google AI Mode across roughly 69 million U.S. desktop sessions between May and July 2025. On that surface the user asks, reads a generated response, asks a follow-up and leaves, almost never clicking through. Visibility in AI Mode therefore means being cited inside the response, and measurement means recording presence, citation and position per prompt and per follow-up rather than counting visits that will not arrive.
In detail
What the evidence shows.
What AI Mode is
AI Mode is a separate conversational experience inside Google Search. The whole response is generated; the question is decomposed into sub-questions, each retrieved and synthesized; sources appear within and beside the answer; and follow-up questions continue the thread. Google documents that it draws on the same index and the same foundations as search.
The 93 percent
Semrush’s figure comes from about 69 million U.S. desktop sessions observed between May and July 2025: about 93 percent of AI Mode sessions ended without a click to an external site. The figure should be read as a property of the surface, not a verdict on any site. It means that on AI Mode, the click is not the unit of success and never was.
What decomposition changes
Because AI Mode breaks a question into parts, it retrieves pages that answer the parts: definitions, comparisons, criteria, specific capabilities. A single broad service page rarely answers a sub-question as well as a glossary entry or a comparison table does. This is why an authority program publishes component pages, and why they earn citations in AI Mode that the service page does not.
Measuring it honestly
Run the prompt set with follow-ups, repeatedly, and record presence, citation, position and sentiment per turn. Report share of voice by engine, keeping AI Mode separate from AI Overviews. Count inquiries by source so the effect is visible where it happens. See how to measure AI share of voice.
Sources
Primary references.
- Semrush, 2025. AI Mode and AI Overviews study: about 69 million U.S. desktop sessions, May to July 2025; AI Overviews trigger rate measured November 2025; AI-search visitor conversion and ChatGPT citation position analysis.
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website
By David Selakovic · Published 2026-10-16 · Revised 2026-10-16 · Reviewed every 180 days