The simplest way to defend your SEO budget has been to point to growth indicators like improved rankings and increased organic traffic. Usually, the story was simple enough to fit on a slide or two. Now, that story is becoming a lot harder to tell. In the first four months of 2026, more than two-thirds of U.S. Google searches ended without a click. Users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of Google visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% of visits when no summary appeared, according to the Pew Research Center . As search behavior changes, that creates a budget problem. The assumptions behind an annual budget can easily…
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