New data from SparkToro and Similarweb covers six countries: the United Kingdom, United States, France, Canada, Italy, and Germany. The headline number is the same everywhere. Most searches end without a click. What differs is the degree, and in those differences is a signal worth paying attention to.
Last week, Rand Fishkin published zero-click search data for the United States. The U.S. number was stark: only 32% of Google searches result in a click to any external site. This week, SparkToro followed with the same analysis across five additional countries using Similarweb's desktop and mobile clickstream panel covering January through April 2026. The full dataset now spans six markets: Germany, Italy, Canada, France, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
The finding that B2B marketing leaders should internalize is not country-specific. No country in this analysis still sends 300 or more clicks to the open web per 1,000 searches. That threshold, once taken for granted, is gone everywhere.
Germany Clicks More. The UK Clicks Least. The Gap Is 20 Points.
Germany has the lowest rate of zero-click searches and the highest percentage of searches that end with a click. The United Kingdom has the highest rate of zero-click searches in the analysis. The spread between them is not cosmetic.
| Metric | Germany | Italy | Canada | France | US | UK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clicks (1x or more) | 37.9% | 36.6% | 36.2% | 34.7% | 32.0% | 30.5% |
| Zero-click searches | 62.1% | 63.4% | 63.8% | 65.3% | 68.0% | 69.5% |
| Performs another search | 22.5% | 24.7% | 25.6% | 22.9% | 29.0% | 26.4% |
| Search session ends | 39.5% | 38.8% | 38.2% | 42.3% | 39.0% | 43.1% |
| Clicks to open web per 1,000 searches | 287 | 280 | 268 | 271 | 231 | 232 |
Source: SparkToro / Similarweb, January–April 2026. Figures are vendor-supplied and unaudited by this publication.
Germany sends 287 clicks to the open web per 1,000 searches. The United Kingdom sends 232. The U.S. sends 231. For marketers running campaigns across multiple English-speaking markets, the UK and U.S. are now functionally equivalent in how little search traffic escapes Google's orbit.
The EU Regulatory Variable Matters, But Causation Is Not Confirmed
Fishkin notes that the European Union's restrictions and penalties against Google for self-preferencing behavior may be working to keep EU searchers clicking, but he is careful to observe that it is equally possible the difference is cultural, linguistic, or driven by user experience features within the German Google interface. That is an honest framing, and it is the right one to hold.
What it does surface, though, is that policy shapes platform behavior, and platform behavior shapes search traffic. If European regulatory pressure is reducing the density of Google's zero-click features in those markets, that is a competitive infrastructure question, not just a user behavior question. Marketing teams with budgets split across EU and English-speaking markets are operating in meaningfully different search environments.
Canada Breaks the English-Language Assumption
The most analytically interesting data point in the study is Canada. Canadian click-through rates sit statistically closer to the major European countries than to the United States or United Kingdom. Canada is an English-speaking market with the same major platforms, the same search intent patterns, and broad cultural overlap with the U.S. Yet it performs closer to Germany and Italy on this measure.
Fishkin draws the explicit inference: if zero-click behavior in the UK and U.S. were simply cultural or linguistic, Canada would look more like those two markets. It does not. That suggests other variables are at play.
For B2B marketers, this is relevant beyond academic interest. If Canadian search behavior diverges from U.S. search behavior in structurally meaningful ways, then treating North America as a single search marketing region carries real risk. A content and generative engine optimization (GEO) strategy calibrated to U.S. click patterns may be underperforming against Canadian queries without anyone noticing.
France Searchers End Their Sessions at the Highest Rate
France has an especially high rate of search session ends following a query. At 42.3%, French searchers end their sessions after searching at a higher rate than any other country in the study except the United Kingdom at 43.1%. Fishkin characterizes French searchers as particularly "efficient" on this basis, meaning they frequently get what they need directly from the search results page and leave without clicking anything.
This matters for any B2B organization running demand generation or brand visibility campaigns in France. If the search results page is the final destination for a large share of French queries, then appearing in AI Overviews, featured snippets, and knowledge panels is not a nice-to-have. It is the only way to reach those searchers at all.
The Channel Picture Has Not Changed. The Scale Has.
B2B marketers built demand generation programs on the assumption that search visibility translated into web traffic. That assumption held when search clicks were abundant. At 62% to 69% zero-click rates across every major market in this data, it no longer holds.
This does not mean search is irrelevant. It means search has become a brand visibility channel rather than a traffic channel for a significant portion of queries. The job of appearing in a search result is still worth doing. But the metric attached to that job has changed. Impressions and answer-layer presence now matter more than click-through rate for many query types.
I wrote about the structural shift from search engine optimization (SEO) to generative engine optimization in the Info-Tech Research Group blueprint Stay Relevant in the Era of AI-Powered Search. This data is consistent with that trajectory. The question is no longer whether AI and zero-click features are reducing traffic. The question is whether marketing teams have rebuilt their measurement frameworks to account for it.
Most have not. Most are still reporting on organic traffic as a primary channel metric. That is a measurement artifact from a search environment that no longer exists.
What to Do Monday
- Pull your organic search traffic data by country for Q1 2026. If you operate in UK or U.S. markets, check whether your traffic trends are consistent with a 30–32% click rate. If your numbers look better, understand why before assuming your content strategy is outperforming the market.
- If your team reports Canada and the U.S. as a single North American region, flag this for review. The data suggests search behavior diverges enough to warrant separate tracking and potentially separate content strategies.
- For any European markets you run, document whether your GEO strategy differs from your U.S. strategy. The regulatory environment in Germany and the EU appears to be producing different search dynamics. Your content visibility work should reflect that.
- Run a session-end analysis on your highest-traffic search queries using Google Search Console. For queries where impressions are high but clicks are low, the answer layer is your primary real estate. Optimize for it directly rather than for the click.
- If your marketing team still uses organic traffic as the primary search success metric, this week is a good time to propose an alternative framework. Impressions, share of answer-layer presence, and brand search volume are more durable indicators in a zero-click environment.
Works Cited
Fishkin, Rand. "Zero-Click Searches: Highest in the UK, Lowest in Germany, and France Has the Most Efficient Searchers." SparkToro, 16 June 2026, sparktoro.com/blog/zero-click-searches-highest-in-the-uk-lowest-in-germany-and-france-has-the-most-efficient-searchers/.