Publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are scrambling to counter an expected collapse in referral traffic dubbed “Google Zero” as Google’s AI Overviews push links further down the search page. The feature, introduced in May 2024, provides direct answers at the top of results, cutting out the clicks that news sites, consultancies and e-learning platforms depend on for advertising and subscriptions. Early data suggest the impact could be severe. Research firm Seer Interactive has logged a 70% drop in organic click-through rates when an AI Overview is displayed. Pew Research finds that only about 1% of searches that show an AI summary result in a user clicking an embedded link, while Bain & Company says 80% of consumers now rely on zero-click results for at least 40% of their queries. SEO specialists report the pain arriving first for information-heavy businesses. Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide cites a law-firm client whose traffic from educational articles is already sliding. Ben Fisher of Steady Demand warns that local service providers could be next once AI summaries become common in location-based searches. Consultants are urging clients to keep AI crawlers switched on, monitor summaries for errors and produce content—such as listicles and video—that ranks well inside the new modules. Some publishers are also expanding newsletters, apps and social-media channels to reduce reliance on Google. The stakes are high. Forrester estimates that 59% of US retail transactions already involve online research, a figure projected to reach $3.8 trillion in sales by 2027. Unless media groups adapt, much of that commerce—and the advertising tied to it—could bypass their websites entirely.