FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Vector Gazette Launches Weekly AI Search Newsletter as Zero-Click Search Reshapes Marketing
The publication translates emerging AI Search research into weekly guidance for marketers, as a growing share of online searches now resolves without a click.
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — September 4, 2026 — The Vector Gazette, a weekly AI Search newsletter for entrepreneurs and marketers, today announced the launch of its publication covering Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the practice of earning brand visibility inside AI-generated answers. The newsletter arrives as independent industry research shows a majority of searches on Google now end without a click, changing how customers discover and choose brands.
According to Sparktoro’s 2026 zero-click research, roughly 68% of U.S. searches on Google now end without a single click. The demand behind those searches has not disappeared, the newsletter says, but it has become far harder to measure. Profound’s 2026 study of more than two million AI conversations found that after an AI assistant names a brand in its answer, users go on to visit that brand’s website at 1.5 to 2.5 times the rate their prior behaviour would predict over the following week. Even as one AI assistant has made its answers more clickable over the past year, more than 97% of those visits carried no trackable link back to the assistant.
“The click died. The customer didn’t. They just show up wearing a disguise,” said Wesley van der Hoop, founder of The Vector Gazette. “An AI assistant recommends a brand, the buyer arrives days later, and the analytics record it as if it came from nowhere.”
The Vector Gazette is designed to help marketers navigate this shift. It publishes one dispatch every Friday, distilling the three developments in AI Search most relevant to marketers that week, and requires that every contributor has at least a decade of experience in the search industry.
The publication argues that the primary audience for online content is shifting from human readers to the AI systems that read that content and recommend brands on a person’s behalf, a change it says click-based analytics were never designed to capture.
That shift, the newsletter contends, points toward a future in which people research less and defer more to automated recommendations. “People are going to search less and less. They’ll just approve a decision the AI already made for them,” said van der Hoop. “If a brand isn’t the name the AI surfaces, it might never be in the room where the decision happens.”
Disclaimer: The Vector Gazette is an independent publication. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by SparkToro, Profound, or any other organisation whose research or data is referenced. All third-party studies and statistics are the property of their respective owners and are cited for informational and commentary purposes only. References to third-party research do not imply any partnership, endorsement, or relationship between those organisations and The Vector Gazette.
The Vector Gazette is a weekly newsletter on AI Search and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), written for entrepreneurs and marketers navigating the shift from traditional search to AI-driven answer engines. Every Friday, it delivers the three most important insights of the week, drawn exclusively from practitioners with a decade or more in the field. Read it free at https://thevectorgazette.com.
Press inquiries
Wesley van der Hoop
hello [at] the vectorgazette.com