Google AI Overviews Linked To 25% Drop In Publisher Referral Traffic, New Data Shows (digiday.com) 18
New data from Digital Content Next shows Google's AI Overviews are linked to notable drops in publisher referral traffic, with surveyed sites seeing year-over-year declines between 1% and 25%. From a report: Digital Content Next (DCN), which counts the New York Times, Conde Nast and Vox among its approximately 40 member companies, checked in with 19 of them between May and June to see what was happening to their Google search referral traffic. The upshot: Google AI Overviews is indeed harming publisher traffic. Organic search referral traffic from Google is declining broadly, with the majority of DCN member sites -- spanning both news and entertainment -- experiencing traffic losses from Google search between 1% and 25%. Twelve of the respondent companies were news brands, and seven were non-news.
Over eight weeks in May and June 2025, the median Google Search referral was down almost every week, with losses outpacing gains two-to-one. For the seven non-news brands in the survey, the downward slope was steady and unbroken. Across the eight weeks, the median YoY decline in referred traffic from Google Search was -10% overall, -7% for news brands, and -14% for non-news brands, per the results.
Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, stressed that these losses are a direct consequence of Google AI Overviews, as many publishers claimed in their responses. The latest data offers a "ground truth" of what's actually happening, cutting through Google's vague claims about "quality clicks," made in its latest post, he added. "I think all publishers are ignoring Google's post. But this probably helps ground that," added Kint. The findings come shortly after a recent Pew survey of 900 U.S. consumers found that AI summaries are making users less likely to click through to links. The U.K.'s Professional Publishers Association (PPA) also found that AI Overviews and AI Mode are steering users toward zero-click results, reducing visits to source sites, and expanding into Google Discover where sources are relegated to citations. Evidence from members shows click-through rates falling 10-25% year-over-year despite stable rankings, with examples including a lifestyle publisher's CTR dropping from 5.1% to 0.6% and an automotive publisher's CTR falling from 2.75% to 1.71% despite increased visibility.
Over eight weeks in May and June 2025, the median Google Search referral was down almost every week, with losses outpacing gains two-to-one. For the seven non-news brands in the survey, the downward slope was steady and unbroken. Across the eight weeks, the median YoY decline in referred traffic from Google Search was -10% overall, -7% for news brands, and -14% for non-news brands, per the results.
Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, stressed that these losses are a direct consequence of Google AI Overviews, as many publishers claimed in their responses. The latest data offers a "ground truth" of what's actually happening, cutting through Google's vague claims about "quality clicks," made in its latest post, he added. "I think all publishers are ignoring Google's post. But this probably helps ground that," added Kint. The findings come shortly after a recent Pew survey of 900 U.S. consumers found that AI summaries are making users less likely to click through to links. The U.K.'s Professional Publishers Association (PPA) also found that AI Overviews and AI Mode are steering users toward zero-click results, reducing visits to source sites, and expanding into Google Discover where sources are relegated to citations. Evidence from members shows click-through rates falling 10-25% year-over-year despite stable rankings, with examples including a lifestyle publisher's CTR dropping from 5.1% to 0.6% and an automotive publisher's CTR falling from 2.75% to 1.71% despite increased visibility.
And it's not because the AI answer is correct (Score:3)
It's because it's so friggin' annoying everyone just gives up and stops using Google.
Alternative take - Derrivative news articles (Score:3)
Not surprised that the newspapers are having a drop in human visitors to their web sites.
Maybe it could be related to the repetition of old worn out retreaded tires of news articles:
- news parroting government economic number press releases
- rehashing something 'new' which confirms the same old worn out social/political talking points
- not finding enough new meaningful fact, figures and expert opinions in both (or more) sides of an issue. Or, avoiding the narrowly drawn news articles on people, celebrity g
Ads and paywalls (Score:4, Interesting)
Publishers might have better luck if they got rid of ads and paywalls.
They might have even better luck if they re-write their shit to GET TO THE FUCKING POINT IN THE first few sentences, instead of after paragraph after paragraph after useless bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
If I was a publisher you would have nothing BUT paywall and ads. Why give your magazine and research away for free?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't disagree.
Re: (Score:2)
Every once in a while, the article about this year's mosquitoes concern suddenly starts talking about the fact that this might be due to the nuclear war that started last friday, or whatever
Re: (Score:2)
I knew those mosquitos were up to no good! Those little fuckers!
poor quality (Score:2)
not only that, but the AI is terrible quality and the google search algorithm, where AI couldn't be truly useful, is also in the dumpster. We have seen the end of the glory days of Google, I'm afraid. It will probably be done in by its own AI.
Just a "25% Drop"? (Score:5, Informative)
My website has been scraped many times, and continues to be scraped, by various bots and other agents, including the major, so-called "artificial intelligences". I expect that my drop in traffic is due mostly to people asking questions that are answered on my site but reading only the summaries provided by AI and never checking for the details that might be found on sites such as mine. I suppose, why bother to visit a real website when you can get a short, half-but-sufficient answer from a convenient large language model with a cool name?
The information on my own website is based on my own research (unless stated explicitly otherwise) and is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike copyright. Recently I directly queried ChatGPT with a carefully worded question based on some information from my own website. The answer I got was almost word-for-word from my own website, with not a single reference to the source. Not one credit or reference to my website.
In spite of regular and frequent updates, revisions, and additional material to my website, legitimate (human) visitor traffic has declined by at least 50% since about a year ago. One wonders why anyone would continue feeding the AI bots.
It took me a while to learn to do this (Score:1)
For however-many years that I've been using Google and its ilk, when I want to find out something I enter a number of what I think would be applicable keywords and then start reading whatever articles show up that look relevant to what I'm trying to find out.
It took me a while to realize that if I just ask the question that I want organically, i.e. "how do I do this" or "What is that" I get the answer immediately without having to read the source articles myself.
Which is extremely handy and useful; when I j