Organic clicks to outside websites accounted for 46.11% of U.S. Google desktop searches in September, up from 39.74% in July, per the third-quarter State of Search study from Semrush. Search Engine Land, which covered the findings on November 4, called it the highest reading across the 15 months studied. Disclosure: Semrush owns Search Engine Land, and Semrush produced the data.
The rebound runs against the dominant narrative that AI answers are draining clicks away from publishers. It deserves attention, and it deserves a hard look at scope. The panel covers desktop activity only. Semrush did not include mobile, so the finding says nothing about the device where many searches begin.
The companion figures point the same direction. U.S. searches ending without any click fell from 24.97% in July to 22.99% in September, its lowest reading since March. Traffic sent to Google’s own properties dropped from 17.84% in August to 14.19% in September. Semrush’s report, as relayed by Search Engine Land, does not say which of these shifts drove the organic gain.
Europe looks stronger still. Organic click share there reached 49.56% in September, with zero-click searches down to 20.99%. The European panel spans 32 countries, including the UK, and also stops at desktop.
AI usage kept climbing in parallel, which complicates any simple story. In September, AI tools took 1.29% of all U.S. desktop activity, a 79% increase on the 0.72% recorded a year before. Traditional search slipped from 10.29% to 9.47% over the same twelve months. In Europe, AI tools rose from 0.86% to 1.42% while traditional search edged up from 9.68% to 9.95%.
Google AI Mode, the company’s conversational search experience, more than doubled its U.S. desktop share during the third quarter, from 0.15% in July to 0.31% in September. In Europe it peaked at 0.53% in August and fell to 0.43% in September. Both numbers remain tiny next to Google’s 92.43% share of U.S. desktop searches (94.47% in Europe).
Query length offers a behavioral clue. Very long queries are growing: 2.58% of September’s U.S. desktop queries on Google ran past 15 words, against 1.67% in August. Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, read the rise as a sign that users now approach Google the way they would an AI assistant, because it copes with longer, more detailed questions. That reading is an interpretation, not a measured cause, and the dataset cannot confirm it.
The ranking-impact angle is where search teams should be careful. A higher click share does not mean every site gained traffic. It describes how searches end across the whole panel, and it says nothing about which domains received those clicks. A publisher whose pages are summarized without a citation can lose visits while the aggregate number improves.
The window is also short. Three months of movement, with the low point in July, is a swing of more than six points in organic click share, but a single quarter cannot separate a durable shift from seasonal behavior or a change in how Google blends its result types. Only the full 15-month series, behind Semrush’s registration wall, would show how this September compares with earlier peaks.
For the next ninety days, compare this desktop trend with your own Search Console clicks split by device before changing any forecast. If your desktop organic clicks are flat while the aggregate rises, the gain is going to someone else, and that gap is the number to chase.
Search Engine Land, by Danny Goodwin, November 4, 2026, reporting on Semrush’s State of Search Q3 2026 report.
