Roughly two-thirds of Google searches today end without a click, according to a recent study from SparkToro. This isn’t some surprising new trend, though; the share of searches that end in a click has been decreasing gradually for years now.
Until the dawn of AI tools and AI overviews, though, the effect of rising zero-click searches on traffic was largely offset by the total number of searches rising at the same time (so, while the click-through rate decreased, overall traffic sent from search engines was not necessarily down). That’s no longer the case. Many sites have seen their organic traffic drop over the last 12-18 months (and this Ahrefs report, cited in the SparkToro study, confirms this).
In the affiliate world, this looks like a serious threat. Many affiliate publishers have traditionally relied on search as a major traffic source. And if they lose traffic, there’s clearly going to be a knock-on effect on affiliate marketers. But how big an issue is this, really, what does it mean for the affiliate channel, and does it actually present an opportunity for affiliate marketers to broaden their scope? Here’s my perspective, as someone working for an affiliate publisher that almost certainly wouldn’t be where it is today without organic traffic.
Today, influence (and not just traffic) is more important than ever
Arguably, some of the losers from the ‘AIpocalypse’ won’t be missed. Thin, generic content sites created purely for search engines (and not real people) aren’t a loss we’ll mourn. (Short aside: some will say that voucher sites fall into this category. I’d argue that, when operated correctly, they still have a key role to play and deserve to stay around. Yes, voucher code sites are part of our portfolio at Atolls, so I am biased. But when the content on voucher sites helps shoppers save money — that means codes that are manually verified by humans, commercial teams negotiating exclusive discounts, etc. — and they benefit retailers by, for example, increasing conversion rates or average order value, they are a positive force in the e-commerce ecosystem.)
Influence is what matters now. Traffic can be gamed; influence can’t. There is a problem, though. The affiliate channel is in the business of rewarding trackable sales, not necessarily influence. Of course, that is exactly one of the biggest benefits of the affiliate channel: advertisers pay for results. But in a world where consumer journeys are reshaped by AI tools, how do we ensure that affiliate marketers and publishers alike are not brushed aside?
It’s something we’ve talked a fair bit about at Atolls. We operate some of the most popular and influential shopping sites in the world; our deal communities (Hotukdeals, mydealz, Dealabs, Chollometro and co) have tens of millions of loyal users and attract hundreds of millions of visits each month between them. They have significant influence on purchasing decisions, many of which we don’t earn any money from. For example, you’ll often find deals for in-store promotions and sales, or for giveaways that users have to visit a store to get. Those threads can generate tens of thousands of visits (which likely result in many people visiting the stores), but that impact won’t show up in an affiliate report. That’s ok; our communities got to where they are because they prioritise the best deals and real advice from buyers, not who pays us the most. But when affiliate marketers who work with our communities only focus on the trackable, last-click attributable sales, they miss a huge opportunity.
So, how do you track and reward influence?
One of the difficult things about influence is that it’s difficult to define. How do you know if publisher X is more influential than publisher Y? The best way is through true incrementality testing, but as you probably know, that’s a whole different topic (and article) in itself.
If you’re trying to judge potential partners upfront (before you can run an incrementality test), you can ask for engagement metrics (return frequency of users, dwell time, page/screen views per visit) alongside typical high-level metrics (unique visits/users, pageviews, etc.) that can show how loyal that publisher’s audience is.
When it comes to rewarding influential publishers, the truth is that, under a pure last-click model, you don't. If the only thing that triggers a payment is the final click before a sale, then everything a community does before that moment (the discovery, the recommendation, the nudge that put the product on someone's list in the first place) goes unrewarded.
The good news is the channel is already moving on this, and has been for a while. Hybrid deals that pay for reach and placement alongside performance are becoming normal rather than exotic. More brands are measuring partners on incrementality (looking at whether they drive additional value that wouldn't have happened anyway) instead of handing all the credit to whoever touched the customer last. And community platforms (including, unsurprisingly, ours) increasingly have media inventory that lets a brand pay for visibility and influence directly, rather than hoping to back into it through a CPA.
That last point is the one I'd push hardest. You don't fix the problem by trying to shoehorn influence into an attribution model that was never built to see it, but rather by paying for influence on its own terms, on a different line. That’s already the case, but what I’m advocating for is the confluence of affiliate and brand marketing functions. They cover different parts of the journey, and the brands getting the most out of us are the ones who've worked that out.
Why communities are critical in the AI age
AI slop has taken over, and now people are looking for trustworthy information and advice from real humans more than ever. Communities are one of the places people are increasingly going for this. The numbers show it: more than 80% of Hotukdeals traffic comes direct, with our other communities reflecting similar numbers. People come to the communities because they trust what they find there, they enjoy interacting with other members, and they know the content is produced by real people based on real experiences.
It’s also why Reddit is one of the most frequently cited sources in AI tools. Reddit, like our communities, is where real human signals and experiences live (although it is increasingly facing issues with AI slop itself). Being the place the machines quote isn't a threat to a community like ours, it's a compliment, and increasingly a source of visibility in its own right. AI can summarise a spec sheet brilliantly, but it can't fake thousands of real people telling each other whether something's actually worth buying or, for example, giving advice on AC units when a heatwave hits (I learned a lot about ACs just by reading comments on the hundreds of deals posted on our sites in recent months).
In summary, communities have a clear moat that makes them even more powerful and relevant today than ever: real people, real advice, real trust, none of which can be generated, gamed or scraped into irrelevance as it is always evolving.
What this means for affiliate marketers
If you take one thing from this, it should be this: stop judging community and content partners purely on the last click, because that number won’t capture what they're actually worth to you.
In practice, that means a few things. Look at your most influential partners and ask yourself what they're driving that your attribution model isn't showing you. Build room in your plans to pay for reach and awareness with those partners, not just conversions. And test properly, with incrementality (easier said than done, admittedly), so you can see the value that last-click hides rather than arguing about it in the abstract.
The brands that do this now will build real standing in the places people still trust, while there's still a clear route to reach them. Affiliate marketers spent years being treated as the channel that closes the sale. In an AI-shaped web, we've got a genuine shot at being the channel that shapes the decision. That's a more influential position than the one we started with, and it's there for the taking.
