For years, online publishers built their entire business around one deal with Google: they filled its search index with content, and Google sent them readers in return. Now, Google’s AI search features have torn that bargain apart — and traffic across the publishing industry is paying the price.
Google AI search (Credits: The Verge)
The shift began in 2024, when Google rolled out AI Overviews — AI-generated summaries that sit at the very top of search results, drawing on pages from across the web. Instead of competing for clicks on the first page of results, publishers suddenly found themselves at the mercy of an AI system that summarizes their work, with no guarantee users would ever click through to the source.
Google AI Overviews: How Publisher Traffic Started Falling
The concerns arrived immediately. The News/Media Alliance warned the feature would be “catastrophic” for web traffic, and a 2024 investigation from Press Gazette found AI Overviews appearing for almost a quarter of news-related searches in May 2024. By August, the outlet found AI Overviews were already replacing media sites that had previously held the top spots for certain queries.
Then, in May 2025, Google went further with the launch of AI Mode, a chatbot-style interface that replaces the standard search engine with detailed summaries drawn from across the web. The vision of a search engine that answers questions without sending users anywhere else moved a step closer to reality.
Google AI Search Traffic Declines Hit Major Publishers
The numbers since then have been stark. A June 2025 report from The Wall Street Journal showed traffic to Business Insider, The Washington Post, HuffPost, and the WSJ itself declining since 2022, with Similarweb data suggesting search traffic to The New York Times fell from 44 percent to 35.5 percent over three years.
A report from Digiday pointed to similar dips at Digital Content Next, a trade association representing outlets including Bloomberg, The Associated Press, The New York Times, Condé Nast, and Vox Media. Between May and June 2025, 19 of its members experienced a traffic loss on Google ranging from 1 to 25 percent. DMG Media, which owns the Daily Mail and Metro, told the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority that click-through rates dropped by up to 89 percent between June and July 2025, citing the impact of AI Overviews.
Pew Research added to the picture, finding that people are “less likely” to click on links to other websites when they see an AI Overview in their results.
Google Says AI Search Helps the Web — Publishers Disagree
Google disputes the bleak reading. Search head Liz Reid has said click volume from the search engine remained “relatively stable,” arguing AI search sends more clicks to different types of websites, especially those with forums, videos, podcasts, and user posts. Senior vice president Nick Fox has similarly defended the changes.
But for traditional publishers, the gap between Google’s claims and their own analytics is the story. An ecosystem built on search traffic is being reshaped by a company that no longer needs to send users to the sites that created the content in the first place — and the industry is still figuring out how to survive in the new arrangement.
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Source: The Verge — read the full story there.
