Anyone else feeling like 'ranking #1' matters less than it used to? (68% zero-click data has me questioning my whole strategy)

Been staring at some 2026 data and it's messing with how I think about SEO going into next year.

Zero-click searches are apparently sitting around 68% of Google searches in the US now, up from ~60% just two years ago. And Google's AI Mode reportedly crossed a billion monthly users within its first year. So even when I do rank well, a huge chunk of people aren't clicking through at all — they're just reading whatever the AI summary spits out.

What's throwing me off is that ranking #1 and getting cited inside an AI answer seem to be turning into two separate games. I've seen a few reports floating around suggesting a large share of AI Overview citations come from pages that don't even crack the top 10 organic results. If that's even directionally true, it means all the work I've put into climbing rankings might not translate the way it used to.

A few things I'm trying to wrap my head around:

1. Is anyone actually tracking how often their brand gets mentioned/cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.? Is that even trackable in a non-painful way yet?
2. Has anyone seen real referral traffic from AI tools show up in GA4, or is it still basically invisible in analytics?
3. Is the E-E-A-T stuff (real expertise, original research, actual credentials) actually making a measurable difference for anyone, or is that still mostly theoretical?

Anyone building specifically for AI citation vs. traditional ranking at this point, or is it too early to bother?

Genuinely curious what people here are seeing in practice vs. what's just forecasting/hype. Feels like the ground is shifting but nobody agrees on how fast.