My website is approaching Google Zero
In a recent article, Nilay Patel contemplates a trend he calls Google Zero. The hypothesis is that there will be a time when Google Search simply stops sending traffic outside of its search engine to third-party websites. This trend will change the business model of the web.
My personal website is trending towards Google Zero. I want to share the details with you to provide a quantitative reference that can be used in the conversation of where the web is going. I don’t want to make generalisations about Search or digital content. Merely I want to share data from my small, personal website that may contribute to a wider discussion.
Google referrals to my website
I spoke about how changes to Google’s search algorithm impacted my website last year. Referrals from Google Search for my website dropped 46% in just a 3-month period, from August 2023 to November 2023. This trend was experienced by some other small websites too.
| Period | Total Clicks | Total Impressions | Average Click-through rate (CTR) | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2023 | 10.2K | 501K | 2% | 18.8 |
| November 2023 | 5.49K | 336K | 1.6% | 19.8 |
| Change | -46% | -33% |
In 2024, traffic from Google levelled off for the most part. This year, there was an increase in the first quarter, before a sharp decline in April. It has continued to trend downwards since then.
It is easier to qualify the trend with a selection of monthly figures from the last 3 years. Unfortunately, I do not have records from 2022, but I know for sure that December 2022 was the highest rate of monthly clicks (referrals) at over 14k.
| Period | Total Clicks | Total Impressions | Average Click-through rate (CTR) | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 2022 | 14K | ? | ? | ? |
| November 2023 | 5.49K | 336K | 1.6% | 19.8 |
| February 2024 | 4.61K | 296K | 1.6% | 12.2 |
| April 2024 | 2.14K | 181K | 1.2% | 16.5 |
| October 2025 | 1.22K | 167K | 0.7% | 9.2 |
Referrals from Google to my website has dropped 91% since 2022. Ironically, the average position of my website’s pages has risen in Google’s rankings. Yet, the click-through rate of my website is at its lowest point in the last 3 years.
Conclusion
Referrals from Google to my website has dropped 91% since 2022. At the current attrition rate, my website will effectively be Google Zero in the next 18 months.
People still find my website regularly through direct referrals (links to my website on other websites), subscription to my RSS feeds, and some traffic from other Search Engines. However, overall far less people find my website because of my diminishing presence in Google Search.
I hope sharing the Google Search data for my small, personal website will contribute to a wider discussion on where the web is going.
The question I am now contemplating is should I just opt out of Google Search altogether? If the future is that the content of my website is used indirectly to generate summaries for AI Overviews, but there is little to no referral traffic to my website, what is the incentive for me to let my website be indexed by Google?