Google’s AI Overviews feature—released globally over the past year—offers even more. This recent and drastic change to the digital space has caused a lot of worry for publishers. This new functionality delivers users AI-generated responses that are displayed above the classic blue text links in SERPs. Google has argued that this feature makes things better for users. As a few news organizations transition toward a new era, others have fallen precipitously with stretching traffic—pulling many expressing an “existential crisis” for journalism.
The Independent Publishers Alliance (IPA) in the UK made a courageous move in filing a complaint with competition regulators. To do this, they claim it’s illegal for Google to use publishers’ content to create these summaries. And US and UK news organizations are more jittery than ever. They’ve been noticing a dramatic and permanent increase in the number of readers coming to their site via search engines.
Industry insiders highlight the troubling trend. And traffic to these “evergreen” or informational articles has tanked by 10-30 percent just as traffic-hungry publishers are trying to avoid laying off staff. As such, a third of small UK publishers are at risk of going out of business before the end of the year.
Impact of AI Overviews on Traffic
The accompanying release of Google’s AI Overviews has caused a free fall in search referral traffic for many of these news organizations. You can see this drop reflected in related SimilarWeb data, where increases in Google Search are among the most likely drivers of this decline. One Aussie news site reported a jaw-dropping 35 percent decrease in their traffic. Just as this drop lines up with national trends that publishers have seen across the globe.
Chris Dicker, a tech industry advocate, expressed alarm over Google’s storyline on AI benefits.
“Be prepared to hear Google’s narrative of ‘AI search drives better quality traffic,’” – Chris Dicker.
He makes the case that the metrics we use to measure business success are actually telling us something very different, writing,
“That certainly could not be further from the truth, the metrics that we measure for business success currently suggests the complete opposite.” – Chris Dicker.
As traffic dwindles, many publishers are urged to reconsider their dependence on Google for audience engagement. Dicker suggests,
“Start planning for a world without any Google traffic.” – Chris Dicker.
The guideline further demonstrates a somewhat new but undeniable sentiment permeating the industry over the last few years that dependence on Google is bad for long-term viability.
Publishers Respond to Declining Traffic
As this disruption from Google’s AI Overviews continues to bring harm, stakeholders have begun laying the groundwork for lawsuits. The Digital Publishers Alliance (DPA) in Australia just declared their intentions to maintain legal options against Google in future discussions. They are willing to draw the line as needed. DPA chair Tim Duggan spoke of their willingness to go on the offensive.
“We reserve all our rights to take any legal actions here in Australia,” – Tim Duggan.
Publishers continue to deal with the impact of Google’s new AI feature. Yet concurrently, they’re blazing new trails, grounded in reader mission, to earn and serve their new readers. Kevin Indig, another industry analyst, pointed out that while some news segments seem stable, evergreen content—the type of information that remains relevant over time—is suffering significantly.
“Where everybody’s seeing a drop is with evergreen content,” – Kevin Indig.
Indig further elaborated that Google’s AI tools have altered user behavior, keeping many users within Google’s ecosystem instead of directing them back to publisher sites for monetization.
“Instead of bringing customers back to a publisher’s site for them to monetise it themselves, AI steals the content and delivers it to a user without any compensation or reward for the original content creator.” – Kevin Indig.
This change has big consequences. It forces us to ask what the future holds for the independent, quality journalism that AI will inevitably help undermine.
The Bigger Picture: Journalism in Crisis
As the environment continues to change, some experts are cautioning that what publishers are grappling with goes far beyond just traffic numbers. Joanne Kuai expressed the larger impact of these shifts, saying,
“We are witnessing an acceleration of platform monopolisation and concentration of power, now fuelled by AI technologies, and this is deepening the crisis of journalism.” – Joanne Kuai.
According to the industry standard for online audience measurement, digital publisher’s ranking by readership has shifted dramatically among top news websites. The truth is that these sites have doubled their combined monthly readers in the last year. This paradox illustrates how the biggest players can succeed along with the changes in traffic patterns. In the meantime, independent and smaller publishers continue to struggle to survive.
To give us more perspective on Google’s profitability in this new paradigm, we turned again to Lily Ray. In her opening remarks at the hearing, she raised concerns about how sustainable Google’s model really is considering the threats to content producers.
“Personally, I find it hard to imagine that Google can be as profitable as it is now,” – Lily Ray.
One thing is obvious — Google’s AI Overviews have had a serious, detrimental effect on traffic. Further, they sharpen existential questions for the long-term sustainability of journalism.
