Google AI Overviews linked to 25% drop in publisher referral traffic, new data shows
By Jessica Davies • August 15, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
Publishers are successfully-accustomed to Google’s familiar PR playbook — offering placating guarantees of additional traffic and better-quality clicks to defuse backlash at any time when it rolls out main search modifications, even as the numbers on the whole recount a definite story. With Google AI Overviews, it’s no diversified.
Google has sought to quell publisher fears over the impression of AI Overviews on their search traffic within the previous couple of weeks, with Liz Reid, vp and head of Google Search, writing an intensive blog post bringing up that third-party efforts to measure the impression of AI overviews on referral traffic “inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in aggregate traffic.”
Nonetheless publishers private seen this movie prior to. New publisher details reinforces the extra familiar sample: search referral traffic is declining One year over One year.
Digital Pronounce Next (DCN), which counts the New York Cases, Condé Nast and Vox amongst its roughly 40 member companies, checked in with 19 of them between Would possibly maybe and June to gape what modified into as soon as going on to their Google search referral traffic. The upshot: Google AI Overviews is indeed harming publisher traffic.
Natural search referral traffic from Google is declining broadly, with the bulk of DCN member websites — spanning every news and leisure — 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 Would possibly maybe and June 2025, the median Google Search referral modified into as soon as down practically per week, with losses outpacing beneficial properties two-to-one. For the seven non-news brands within the discover, the downward slope modified into as soon as valid and unbroken.
At some level of the eight weeks, the median YoY decline in referred traffic from Google Search modified into as soon as -10% overall, -7% for news brands, and -14% for non-news brands, per the outcomes.
Jason Kint, CEO of DCN, wired that these losses are a bid end result of Google AI Overviews, as many publishers claimed of their responses. The most modern details affords a “ground reality” of what’s if truth be told going on, cutting thru Google’s imprecise claims about “quality clicks,” made in its most modern post, he added. “I feel all publishers are ignoring Google’s post. Nonetheless this potentially helps ground that,” added Kint.
The findings near quickly after a recent Pew discover of 900 U.S. customers discovered that AI summaries are making customers much less likely to click on thru to links.
Hope within the compose of Department of Justice treatments
There may possibly be just a few hope on the horizon, within the compose of a pending treatments recount from Judge Amit Mehta within the Department of Justice’s Google Search antitrust case. Baked into the a range of proposals being waded thru is one core one, which, if it were to be granted, would be gigantic news for publishers: the proposed separation of Google’s AI bot crawler from its search crawler, said Kint.
Currently, publishers can’t block Google’s AI crawler without disappearing off the hunt index entirely, so unless a DOJ mandate comes thru forcing Google to substitute this, publishers are rather caught in a holding sample.
The resolve may possibly most seemingly most seemingly declare an injunction requiring speedy sail as an different of wanting forward to an appeal, wired Kint. Most continuously, the DoJ would need to masks that irreparable harm is going on and that it’s likely to prevail on appeal. “Web site site visitors is down double digits with some publishers, in sigh that harm is going on in actual time.” A ruling may possibly most seemingly most seemingly power Google to provide the different and separate the services and products correct away, which may possibly most seemingly be a famous transfer, he added.
European publishers are also pushing for EU regulators to take swift sail on the identical declare with Google AI Overviews, claiming the that AI Overviews is having a detrimental waste on neutral publishers’ websites, and that the lack to make a decision out of Google’s AI crawler without shedding off search rankings is inflicting irreparable harm. Google serene maintains that a range of the claims made about traffic from search are “highly incomplete.” A spokesperson for Google didn’t directly return a question for commentary on this story.
Preventative solutions
Publishers private a long historical previous of adapting to Google’s modifications, discovering out to navigate algorithm shifts, product updates, and recent facets while discovering programs to retain traffic and earnings.
Many private long argued that staying on high of breaking news and affirming excessive-quality journalism is needed to performing successfully on AI-pushed platforms. web optimization practices serene subject, and five publishing experts recently told Digiday they’re no longer falling for hype around GEO and jumping to switch up their solutions. Others are being extra proactive with adapting their web optimization solutions.
Jess Sholtz, marketing and marketing marketing and marketing consultant and normal CMO for Ringer Media, a Swiss-headquartered media community, the place she led AI technique, concurs that core web optimization technique shouldn’t substitute. “[AI summary platforms like] ChatGPT are no longer raise a tall index, it’s a ways RAG-ing on present indexes,” she said “Must you’re no longer within the [search engine] index you may possibly most seemingly most seemingly most seemingly’t be within the [AI summary] citation and you fail at that first level.”
RAG stands for Retrieval-Augmented Expertise, and is a process of combining dilapidated search with AI textual inform abilities. In desire to the AI searching to memorize all details in its mannequin, it retrieves relevant details from an external source or “index” and then generates an solution based mostly entirely on that retrieved details.
Sholtz is adamant that every publishers can private obvious they’re forward of doable future traffic knocks nonetheless that smaller, much less successfully-identified titles mustn’t neglect the importance of investing of their branding.
Within the previous, ranking on the head of Google search provided a extra or much less built-in credibility, despite the indisputable reality that the user didn’t know the publisher, she wired. Nonetheless with AI-pushed interfaces admire ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews, that automatic belief has eroded. Without constructive impress alerts, even quality inform struggles to generate clicks and engagement, shifting the focal level from pure editorial energy to a aggregate of inform, impress recognition, and user belief, added Sholz.
“On these recent AI surfaces, being the head citation doesn’t private that identical ‘oh it’s ranking so I belief it — it’s elegant,’ declare,” she said. “And so branding is that first pillar that’s coming in plenty extra because someone isn’t going to blindly honest correct click on that high citation.”
Over the last two years, Sholz helped lead a strategic substitute all over Ringier Media, which targeted on making employ of recent sources to branding and tech to attend attend with these challenges amongst its lesser-identified titles, she added, despite the indisputable reality that she wasn’t ready to transfer into further detail without attach off from the media community.
