The number that should worry every trades business
New research from SparkToro, built on Similarweb clickstream data, puts a hard figure on something most of us have felt for a while: 68.01% of Google searches in early 2026 ended without a single click through to a website. That is up from 60.45% just two years ago, in 2024. Only 276 searches out of every 1,000 now send someone to the open web. The rest stay inside Google, answered on the results page itself.
We work with UK trades and small business owners on AI builds every day, and this is the stat we are now putting in front of every client conversation about marketing spend. If a customer is searching for a plumber, an electrician or a builder and Google answers the question before they ever see a website, the old playbook of “get found on Google, win the click, win the job” is quietly breaking down underneath a lot of businesses that have not noticed yet.
What is actually happening to search
The driver is AI Overviews, the summarised answer boxes Google now shows above the normal results. Search Engine Land’s coverage of the SparkToro study notes that AI Overviews now appear on more than 20% of Google searches, and when one shows up, click-through rates to the underlying websites drop by nearly 60%. Google is not sending people away from the results page anymore. It is trying to keep them on it, refining their query or reading a summary Google itself wrote, rather than clicking through to compare businesses.
For a lot of commercial content that is a genuine problem, but for local trade searches it changes shape rather than disappearing. SparkToro’s own write-up makes the point that Google’s answer boxes handle informational queries well, “what does a boiler service cost”, “how often should guttering be cleared”, but a booking still has to happen somewhere else. The click has not vanished for trades. It has moved, from the blue links further down the page to the map pack and the Google Business Profile card sitting at the top.
Why trades are exposed more than most
UK consumers still search before they hire. According to trades marketing research covering 2026, over 80% of UK consumers search online before hiring a local trade business, and the majority of that behaviour happens on mobile, where map pack results and Google Business Profile cards dominate the screen before a single organic link is visible. That is genuinely good news if your profile is strong. It is a real problem if it is not.
We have seen the gap first hand. A complete, well-maintained Google Business Profile gets roughly 7 times more clicks than an incomplete one, and profiles with recent reviews, accurate categories and real photos are consistently the ones filling the three map pack slots that most mobile searchers actually tap. Businesses relying on a website ranking well in the shrinking pool of blue links below the fold are fighting for a smaller and smaller share of a search that is disappearing anyway.
The uncomfortable part: a nicely designed website with weak local signals is now worse value than a plain one with a complete Google Business Profile, consistent reviews and accurate service categories. Design spend has been going to the wrong place for a lot of trades businesses.
What we are telling trades clients to do about it
We build AI systems and automations for small UK businesses, and the advice we are giving right now is not “write more blog posts”. It is to stop treating the website as the front door and start treating it as one of several doors, with the Google Business Profile and direct contact routes doing more of the real work.
Three changes we are actually implementing:
Own the map pack, properly. Full service categories, weekly photo uploads, and a review request sent automatically after every completed job. Reviews are the single fastest lever most trades businesses can pull, and the ones we have helped set up automatic review requests for have seen their map pack position move within weeks, not months.
Make the booking route work without a click. If a customer never has to leave the search results page, the business needs a phone number, a booking link and messaging option visible directly on that Google Business Profile card, and all three need to actually be answered. A missed call because nobody could pick up is now a lead lost entirely inside Google, with no website visit logged anywhere to show it happened.
Write for the AI Overview, not just the ranking. Clear, direct answers to the actual questions customers ask, “how much does X cost”, “how long does Y take”, “do I need a permit for Z”, written in plain language near the top of a page, are what AI Overviews are pulling from to build their summaries. Getting cited inside that summary, even without the click, keeps a business’s name in front of the customer at the exact moment they are deciding who to call.
The 90-day checklist
For any trades business reading this and wondering where to start, the order matters:
First, audit the Google Business Profile. Every category filled in, opening hours correct, service areas listed, and a photo added at least weekly. Second, put a review request into every job completion, automated if possible, because a business collecting reviews consistently will out-rank one that collects them in bursts. Third, check that every enquiry route on that profile, phone, message, booking link, is actually being answered, because a missed call is now a missed job with no second chance further down a results page that barely exists any more. Fourth, rewrite the two or three most-asked customer questions on the website in plain, direct language, because that is the content AI Overviews are most likely to lift and credit.
None of this depends on winning the argument with Google over whether zero-click search is fair. It is not going to reverse. The businesses that adapt fastest to being found and booked without a click are the ones that will keep the phone ringing while the ones still optimising purely for blue-link traffic wonder where their leads went.