Out of every 1,000 Google searches, only 276 still send a click to a real website. Two years ago it was 374. That is a quarter of the open web's traffic, quietly defunded, in twenty-four months. People read the answer and never leave.
So tracking click-through in 2026 is like counting who walked past your shop. It feels like data. It tells you almost nothing about whether you are winning.
The metric that replaced it
The mention. Can a human, or an AI, say your name when you are not in the room? Brand used to come from traffic. Now it is the other way around: being named is what creates the demand, and the click is just one possible result of it.
The move
Do one thing this week. Open ChatGPT and ask it to recommend the best in your category. If your name is not in that answer, that is your real problem, not your ranking.
If you stopped counting clicks tomorrow, would you even know whether your marketing was working?
Alex Mureșan does go-to-market distribution for founders who'd rather be right early than safe and late. Get in touch →