Absolutely. I've been observing the same pattern across multiple clients' analytics dashboards. What we're seeing is the gradual erosion of organic click-through as search engines increasingly serve up direct answers. I've had entire research sessions where I extracted exactly what I needed from the AI-generated snippet without ever touching a single result link.
From a technical standpoint, this has profound implications for attribution modelling. if you're tracking UTM parameters and relying on click-through data to measure content performance, you're now missing a significant portion of intent signals. The 'why' here matters: Google's snippet extraction doesn't trigger a visit event, so your CRM and marketing automation platform never registers that engagement. This means your lead scoring models, content effectiveness reports, and even your SEO ROI calculations become progressively inaccurate.
I've started building workarounds - small JavaScript listeners that fire a custom event when a user interacts with a snippet area (copying text, lingering cursor). it's not perfect, but it's better than complete blindness. whether this is 'better or worse' depends entirely on whether you're optimising for brand exposure or direct conversions. For awareness play, it's a gift. For bottom-of-funnel attribution, it's a nightmare.
