‘Catastrophic’: What Google’s AI-infused search results could mean for publishers

Google rolled out AI Overviews in search results for all U.S. users last week, which could result in a significant dip in referral traffic to many publishers’ sites. AI responses now appear at the top of results pages and provide direct answers to many queries instead of pointing users to third-party websites to find relevant content. 

Google has been moving in this direction for some time by including snippets from publishers’ content directly in search results pages, but publishers worry the shift to AI-driven responses will result in Google sending less traffic to their sites. That’s bad news for many – particularly for those reliant on advertising as their primary revenue source.

I asked a few publishers last week what impact they think the move will have on their businesses and the replies were interesting. One described it as “end game for publishers that rely on “utility content”. Another said it was “The final nail in the coffin” for their relationship with Google. A third replied with a gif of an asteroid wiping out a planet.

The big question for publishers regarding this change – as with any update Google makes to its search engine – is what type of publishers are likely to be affected most. Early signs suggest AI responses are already proving highly effective and useful for relatively straightforward queries, such as “how-to” or “what time is” questions. Publishers that have oriented their content around low-stakes utility content might expect their traffic from Google to diminish as a result.

Publishers with content oriented around more nuanced or complex ideas might be less worried about the shift, and AI results could even help steer higher-quality traffic to their properties if those results help connect the dots more effectively between publishers’ content and users’ queries. 

For news publishers, the impact could vary significantly based on how much they rely on traffic from search-oriented content. Those that currently generate a large portion of their traffic from “what time is the eclipse” or “is this TV show based on a true story” type queries could find their traffic declining from this point. It could quickly become apparent which publishers have filled their homepages with news but have actually been subsisting on traffic from relatively low-value search terms.

“This will be catastrophic to our traffic, as marketed by Google to further satisfy user queries, leaving even less incentive to click through so that we can monetize our content,” Danielle Coffey, the chief executive of the News/Media Alliance, told CNN.

Google argues the changes will benefit news companies, and that improving search results will actually result in it sending more traffic to publishers. “We see that the links included in AI Overviews get more clicks than if the page had appeared as a traditional web listing for that query… As we expand this experience, we’ll continue to focus on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators,” the company said in its announcement of the feature.