Google’s AI overviews are cutting traffic to traditional search results
AI is changing how people interact with information online, and fast. Google’s AI Overviews now show up at the top of many search results. These machine-generated summaries give users a quick take on the topic, pieced together from different online sources. On the surface, this looks like progress, faster answers, less time spent browsing. But the shift is fundamental.
New data from Pew Research, based on browsing behavior from over 900 users, shows that people shown AI Overviews are less likely to click on the links below them. In fact, users who weren’t served a summary were about twice as likely to engage with actual results. That tells us something important: when the AI gives them a quick answer, most users won’t go any further.
For leaders overseeing content businesses, this is more than technical friction, it’s a change in user behavior. Clicking through to linked sources is how sites earn revenue, grow audiences, and capture data for future optimization. If users stop clicking, the core mechanics break down.
As a result, what we’re seeing isn’t just a technology rollout, it’s a shift from a traditional ecosystem of discovery and engagement to a search experience that mines content, repackages it, and presents it in a closed loop. That loop starts and ends with Google. The old model brought users into your ecosystem. The new one keeps them in Google’s.
The takeaway is simple: traffic doesn’t flow the way it used to. If you’re still building your strategy around click-through rates, you’re planning against a past version of the internet.
Publishers are losing traffic, and it’s getting worse
Let’s get straight to it, publishers are being hit hard. Travel sites. Health blogs. Newsrooms. Anyone depending on Google search traffic to run a sustainable business is now operating in a much tougher environment.
Why? Because AI Overviews remove the need for clicks in the first place. When the summary provides what someone’s looking for, they don’t need to go any further. That’s what the numbers show. Similarweb data reveals a staggering 55% drop in organic search traffic across top information websites between April 2022 and April 2025. At HuffPost, organic traffic has been more than cut in half over the past three years. And in May 2025, Business Insider laid off 21% of staff, citing an ongoing drop in search referrals.
This is a survival risk. As fewer users reach original content, fewer eyeballs translate directly into missed ad impressions and fewer subscribers. Smaller publishers are caving under the weight. Turkey’s Gazete Duvar had to shut down operations entirely after traffic collapsed.
Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, put it plainly: “Google is changing from a search engine to an answer engine.” He’s right. And the ripple effect hits everyone creating original content.
For C-suite executives at media companies, this is a signal to stop relying solely on distribution models that sit on top of someone else’s platform. The system is evolving. The traffic you depended on is now absorbed at the top of the funnel. Your audience doesn’t leave Google.
Whether you’re running a media house or a direct-to-consumer brand, the focus now needs to shift. Start engaging users directly. Rebuild loyalty without leaning entirely on Google’s infrastructure. Because that infrastructure is no longer built to send users your way.
AI overviews are cutting off the source, and that breaks the model
There’s a deeper system failure happening here. AI Overviews don’t just reduce traffic, they often repurpose content without directing users to where it came from. For publishers, this undercuts the entire digital content model.
When users read an AI-generated summary, they rarely click through to the original site. It’s not because the content lacks value, it’s because the interface minimizes the need to explore further. Even when AI Overviews pull directly from articles or blog posts, the links are buried or sometimes missing altogether. A recent case from 404 Media makes the problem clear. They published a detailed piece on AI-assisted music production. Google’s AI summarized the story, but the summary linked to none of their work. The value stayed on Google. The traffic didn’t.
That means fewer reads, fewer shares, and fewer impressions. Publishers don’t just lose attention, they lose revenue. Advertisers only pay if someone sees the ad. No visits, no monetization. And for C-suite leaders operating in digital-first environments, this isn’t just a product issue, it’s structural.
If your business runs on exposure, you need to rethink the equation. The model where publishers draw revenue from search-driven user journeys no longer holds up. AI is intercepting the demand before it ever becomes a click. And if your content is being used to inform the answer without driving people back to your domains, you’re losing not just the customer, but the customer data, and the ability to re-engage them later.
This matters across sectors. Whether you’re a media executive or a product-focused CEO, visibility now needs to be earned and protected independently of Google’s evolving logic.
SEO is losing value because AI summaries dominate attention
Let’s talk about SEO, this used to be your fastest lane for scaling online visibility. Get your site ranked high on Google, and you’d pull in attention, clicks, and revenue. Not anymore.
AI Overviews are disrupting that flow. When users are given a complete answer at the top of the page, they don’t bother scrolling further. The prominence of AI summaries neutralizes even the best-ranked organic result below. The top link, previously a guaranteed magnet for user engagement, is being ignored. And the data proves it. According to The Register, click-through rates dropped by an average of 34.5% for top-ranked pages that appeared beneath an AI Overview.
For companies investing heavily in SEO, this changes the return. You can still get ranked. Your site can still be optimized. But the user’s attention may never reach you.
For executives who manage growth and performance, this should be a signal to diversify strategy. SEO cannot be your only lever. You may still need it, but you can’t bet on it alone.
Right now, the traffic game is shifting to platforms that control how users access the web. If your visibility depends on algorithms you don’t control, you’re exposed every time the interface changes. And clearly, it’s changing.
You need a more direct path to your audience, whether through owned platforms, newsletters, proprietary apps, or community-based services. Control the access point, and you reduce the risk of being filtered out by an algorithm update or replaced by a summary.
That’s where your focus needs to be, not on maximizing page rank under legacy assumptions, but on building direct, sustained interest over time.
AI summaries are circulating low-quality content and undermining trust
The emergence of AI-generated search summaries introduces a major quality control issue. Some of these summaries are based not on trusted sources, but on content that has already been generated by other AI systems. That creates a loop of automated content pulling from itself. The result: vague answers, factual errors, and missing context.
404 Media pointed to one example where a Google AI Overview was constructed from another AI-generated response, which itself was built from other secondary sources. There was no original journalism, no expert review, and no clear source hierarchy. That chain of sourcing isn’t just unreliable, it’s structurally flawed.
When information is being recycled without human oversight, the chances of falsehood increase. The AI doesn’t verify credibility the way trained editors or domain experts do. It simply predicts what sounds plausible based on patterns in existing material. For non-native English-speaking professionals and global executives, this becomes a reliability risk, especially when business decisions, compliance questions, or international regulations depend on accurate search output.
This isn’t a theoretical concern. If the top summary delivered to millions of users is imprecise, or worse, incorrect, and if it comes from a non-audited AI source, the damage spreads faster than most organizations can correct.
The deeper issue involves trust. If your customers, clients, or stakeholders begin to doubt the reliability of widely-used platforms based on visible inaccuracies, reputation damage can carry over to businesses that rely on those output channels.
If you’re leading an organization that produces high-integrity content, medical, legal, financial, academic, this is your signal to protect your IP and structure how your content is presented externally. That might mean tightening licensing rules, implementing watermarking, or renegotiating search visibility terms directly with platforms. Passivity here is not an option.
Google is generating more ad revenue, while publishers lose traffic
The user doesn’t click. The publisher loses the visit. But Google still gains. That’s the core tension created by AI Overviews. While content creators experience declining site traffic and revenue, Google is monetizing the interaction directly at the top of the page, by embedding ads within or near the summaries.
The result? The traffic that used to go to publishers is now being contained and monetized on Google’s real estate. This isn’t a shift in user behavior by chance, it’s part of a structural design that prioritizes Google’s own revenue streams. In the last quarter of 2024, Alphabet reported its highest-ever quarterly revenue: $96.4 billion, up 14% year-over-year. Advertising accounted for $54.2 billion of that.
For perspective, a SparkToro study noted that only 36% of Google searches in the U.S. led users to actual websites that did not include Google-owned services or advertising properties. That percentage is shrinking. More people are staying within Google’s ecosystem, and fewer are reaching you.
This isn’t just about media. Any sector, eCommerce, healthcare, professional services, experiencing a decline in search traffic while Google’s ad business accelerates is being indirectly deprioritized by the platform.
For C-suite leaders, the issue is clear: unless you own the user journey from search to conversion, the platform will extract growing value while you compete for smaller margins. The old idea that traffic equals opportunity only works if the platform is built to send traffic your way.
Ad budgets, content strategies, and audience development plans need to reflect this shift. Put energy into owned channels, first-party data collection, and alternative traffic sources that don’t depend entirely on Google’s incentives. You don’t need to abandon search, but you do need to stop expecting it to work in your favor by default.
Long-form user queries are driving the AI summary shift
The structure of user search behavior is changing. It’s not just the answers that are automated, it’s the questions, too. AI Overviews are more likely to appear when users enter longer, more detailed search queries. Full phrases and questions, anything that mimics natural speech, are triggering these summaries at a higher rate than short keyword-based inputs.
That behavior tells us people are using search engines differently. They expect precise, tailored responses. And Google’s AI serves that need by generating direct answers instantly, often without showing the traditional list of links unless users scroll further.
For executives leading digital content, product search strategies, or user acquisition, this is a critical insight. Traditional SEO often targets keywords, but AI summaries respond to language, intent, and context. The algorithm is trained to predict what a conversational user wants and deliver it up front.
That places pressure on content teams to rethink how information is structured and formatted. Content that can answer a user’s question quickly, often with decisive clarity, has a better chance of making it into the summary layer. But ironically, even when your content powers that summary, you may not receive credit or visibility.
The rules of engagement are shifting. Length and clarity in user queries are now one of the strongest inputs influencing whether AI Overviews get triggered. That means strategies designed around traditional short-tail search may no longer deliver meaningful results.
If your business relies on user acquisition via search, especially in competitive environments, you need to understand these new signals, influence what the AI sees, and audit how your high-value content performs against longer user input patterns.
AI overviews prioritize forums and institutional sources over news media
We’re seeing a clear shift in content prioritization. Google’s AI Overviews pull heavily from community-driven platforms like Reddit, informational hubs like Wikipedia, and government websites. These sources surface more frequently in summaries than they do in standard search lists.
News outlets, on the other hand, haven’t gained ground in the transition. According to research cited, their presence in AI Overviews is more or less on par with their appearance in basic search listings. That might sound neutral, but it’s not. Static visibility in a context where other sources have multiplied their exposure means relative decline.
For media leaders, this is a red flag. Valuable, original reporting is being treated as one of many optional inputs, while community opinions and generalized overviews are becoming source material for answers served at scale.
If you produce specialized or authoritative content, expect lower priority unless your material matches the favored formats or domains feeding Google’s AI. And because the summaries often collapse detailed information into simplified conclusions, nuance is consistently lost.
This puts pressure on C-level content and editorial executives to understand how their content is being parsed, interpreted, and surfaced, or buried, in this environment.
The takeaway is straightforward: volume alone doesn’t guarantee reach. Networked content ecosystems like Reddit and high-trust institutional sources are winning in the current AI-driven architecture. If your content isn’t aligned contextually or structurally with how the AI prioritizes inputs, you’re not only losing SEO, but voice in the conversation entirely.
Users trust AI summaries, even when accuracy is in question
User behavior is shifting in a way that demands executive attention. Despite documented cases of errors, vague phrasing, and imprecise sourcing, users still trust AI-generated summaries. These summaries are designed to sound confident, and for most people, that’s enough. They often skip over the fine print, context, or even the links offered with the content.
According to Pew Research, the vast majority of users who see AI Overviews don’t click into the actual sources. For businesses whose models rely on user interaction, whether news publishers, product review platforms, or health content providers, that trust in AI over original sources presents a direct challenge to visibility and credibility.
There’s a measurable divide forming. Users are increasingly rewarding immediacy, not depth or authorship. They see an AI summary at the top of a results page and treat it as the definitive answer, even when it may originate from unclear, third-party, or aggregated sources.
For C-suite executives, especially in reputation-sensitive sectors like media, healthcare, education, and finance, this is a strategic weakness to address. If users default to trusting summaries without questioning their origin or accuracy, content creators and truth-driven businesses lose both reach and influence.
To win in this environment, companies need to be visible at the summary level, and also educate their audience to recognize the value of verified, in-depth reporting. That may require investment in user education, content accreditation, strategic partnerships with platforms, or legal pressure to enforce attribution standards. Left unchecked, misplaced user trust becomes a systemic constraint on how high-quality content competes in public discourse.
Google’s AI shift attracts regulatory scrutiny and competitive pressure
Google’s move toward AI-driven search isn’t happening in isolation. It’s under pressure, from both new players and regulators. Emerging competitors like Perplexity are starting to win users by offering AI-powered search experiences designed from the ground up. These aren’t minor experiments, they represent material threat.
Bank of America analyst Muhammad Rasulnejat called attention to Google’s $14 billion infrastructure spend last quarter, describing it not just as scaling up but as a response to mounting competition. That level of investment signals a mix of confidence and urgency. Google is winning the AI race in the short term, but it’s no longer without challengers.
Meanwhile, regulators are watching closely. The U.S. Department of Justice has an open antitrust case against Google, which includes pressure to divest from core products like the Chrome browser. With revenue concentration still anchored in advertising and user data, and with AI features further consolidating user attention within Google’s ecosystem, the company is under growing scrutiny for entrenching its dominance.
For executives leading companies that depend on Google’s infrastructure, whether in tech, digital media, e-commerce, or services, this changing landscape brings both risk and opportunity. You’re operating inside a system that could face forced restructuring, perhaps within your planning cycle. It’s no longer enough to assume platform stability.
Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, noted plainly that “Google is changing from a search engine to an answer engine.” He’s right. That shift changes how distribution works and it reshapes the rules of visibility, business dependency, and control.
Executives should prepare for accelerated platform shifts, new AI-driven challengers with cleaner regulation models, and future compliance costs as digital ecosystems are more heavily scrutinized. The next competitive advantage may not come from owning the best content, but from having the most control over how that content is accessed.
Concluding thoughts
This isn’t just a search update. It’s a structural shift in how information flows online and who captures the value. Google’s AI Overviews are changing user behavior at scale, cutting traffic to original sources, compressing visibility, and centralizing control over both attention and monetization.
For publishers, platforms, and any business depending on search traffic, the warning signs are clear. Traditional strategies built on organic discovery, SEO dominance, or platform dependency are losing ground. Your content can power the answer and still be invisible.
The next move belongs to leaders who understand the stakes. Own your distribution. Build direct lines to users. Control how your content is surfaced, linked, and monetized. Waiting for the algorithm to work in your favor is no longer a strategy, it’s a risk.
Act, don’t adapt. The system won’t shift back.
