Google’s AI search options are killing visitors to publishers

Google’s AI Overviews and other AI-powered tools, including chatbots, are devastating traffic for news publishers, per a Wall Street Journal report. 

Now that people can simply ask a chatbot for answers – sometimes generated from news content taken without a publisher’s knowledge – there’s no need to click on Google’s blue links. That means referrals to news sites are plummeting, cutting off the traffic publishers need to sustain quality journalism. 

Google released AI Overviews, its search result summary tool, last year. Its rollout hit traffic to sites like vacation guides, health tips, and product reviews, per the Journal. AI Mode, Google’s ChatGPT competitor, is expected to hit traffic harder. It responds in a conversational tone with fewer external links.

For The New York Times, the share of traffic from organic search to the paper’s desktop and mobile sites fell to 36.5% in April 2025, down from 44% three years earlier, according to data from Similarweb cited in the Wall Street Journal report.

Google likes to tell a different story. During Google’s developer conference in May, the company said its AI Overviews feature has boosted search traffic — though maybe not for publishers. 

Publishers like The Atlantic and The Washington Post have spoken about the need for the industry to shift business models, and fast, to combat this threat to journalism. Some have resorted to doing content-sharing deals with AI companies for additional revenue streams. 

The Times most recently inked a deal with Amazon to license its editorial content to train the tech giant’s AI platforms. Several publishers, including The Atlantic, have signed on to work with OpenAI. AI startup Perplexity’s plan is to share advertising revenue with news publishers when its chatbot surfaces their content in response to a query.