Google's AI search features have cut the traffic online publishers depend on

For two decades, web publishers and Google had a working trade. Publishers filled Google's index with articles, and Google sent readers back through links. A column in The Verge's newsletter The Stepback, published on 25 October 2026, sets out how that trade has broken down since Google began answering queries with AI.

The change began in 2024 with AI Overviews, which places an AI-written summary at the top of search results and lists source links below it. In May 2025 Google added AI Mode, which replaces the usual results page with a chatbot-style interface. In both cases the answer appears on Google's page. A click to the publisher is optional.

What the traffic data shows

Soon after AI Overviews launched, the News/Media Alliance warned that it would be "catastrophic" for web traffic. Press Gazette found that the summaries appeared on almost a quarter of news-related searches in May 2024. By August of that year, it found that they had pushed media sites out of top positions they had held for some queries.

Later figures point the same way. According to The Verge, The Wall Street Journal reported in June 2025 that traffic to Business Insider, The Washington Post, HuffPost and the Journal itself had fallen since 2022. The Journal cited Similarweb data showing that search's share of traffic to The New York Times fell from 44 percent to 35.5 percent over three years. Digiday reported that 19 members of Digital Content Next, a trade group whose members include Bloomberg, The Associated Press and Condé Nast, lost between 1 and 25 percent of their Google traffic between May and June 2025. DMG Media, which owns the Daily Mail and Metro, told the UK's Competition and Markets Authority that its click-through rates fell by up to 89 percent between June and July 2025, and blamed AI Overviews.

The most direct measurement comes from the Pew Research Center. Pew tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025, covering 68,879 Google searches. Of these, 18 percent produced an AI summary. When a summary appeared, users clicked a traditional result link on 8 percent of visits. Without a summary, they did so on 15 percent. Users clicked a link inside the summary itself on 1 percent of visits. Browsing sessions ended on 26 percent of results pages that had a summary, compared with 16 percent of those that did not.

Google's account, and the courts

Google describes the situation differently. Liz Reid, head of Google Search, has said that click volume from the search engine is "relatively stable" and that AI search sends more clicks to sites "with forums, videos, podcasts, and posts" from users. Nick Fox, Google's senior vice president of knowledge and information, told the BBC: "From our point of view, the web is thriving."

Publishers have sued Google in several countries, mostly without success so far. US District Judge Amit Mehta dismissed an antitrust case brought by Chegg and Penske Media, whose titles include Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter and The Verge. The same judge rejected a proposed class action over AI Overviews filed by newspapers in Arkansas. Regulators have had more effect. After an order from the UK, Google rolled out a control that lets publishers keep their pages out of AI Overviews and AI Mode without losing visibility in ordinary search. The Verge notes that opting out does not bring the lost traffic back.

How publishers and Google are adjusting

Publishers have moved toward channels Google does not control: social media, newsletters and subscriptions. Google has made some changes to how it shows sources. Hovering over a link in AI Mode or AI Overviews now opens a pop-up listing articles with images, and Google says in-line links appear "higher up in responses more frequently." Other changes go the other way. The Verge reports that for some queries, AI Overviews now expand automatically, which pushes the ordinary blue links further down the page.

Google has also started paying for some content. The company says 400 publishers, including The Washington Post, CNN, Axios and the Financial Times, are part of its News AI pilot program, which licenses content for new AI features. The Information and Digiday report that Google is testing a separate program that would pay publishers when their content is used in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google has not published the terms. The pressure is not limited to news outlets: The Wall Street Journal reports that Reddit is considering cutting Google off because of falling traffic.

What it means for work

AI Overviews and AI Mode now do work that a reader used to do: opening several sources, comparing them and pulling out an answer. The cost lands on the people who wrote those sources. Search-driven reporting, explainers and reference content lose the clicks that funded them, and that pays for writers, editors and SEO staff. Jobs built on ranking in Google, such as search optimisation and traffic-driven commissioning, are shifting toward newsletters, subscriptions and audience work that publishers control directly. Several questions remain unanswered: whether licensing and per-use payments will replace lost advertising revenue, which publishers will be offered those deals, and whether readers who get answers from summaries will still pay for the reporting behind them.