Google’s AI Overviews and other chatbots are significantly reducing traffic for news publishers, forcing them to adapt their business models to stay afloat. The rise of these tools has led to a decline in referrals to news sites, making it harder for publishers to sustain quality journalism.
Google released its AI Overviews tool last year, which provides search result summaries that compete with news content. However, data from Similarweb shows that the share of traffic from organic search to reputable publications like The New York Times has dropped from 44% to 36.5% in just two years. This decline is attributed to the growing popularity of AI-powered chatbots, including Google’s ChatGPT competitor.
While Google claims its AI Overviews feature has boosted search traffic, it appears that this boost comes at the expense of publishers’ revenue. The industry is shifting towards new business models, such as content-sharing deals with AI companies and advertising partnerships like Amazon’s licensing deal with The Times. Some publishers are also exploring revenue streams by sharing their content with AI startups like OpenAI and Perplexity.
As the journalism industry faces this significant threat, it remains to be seen whether these efforts will be enough to combat the devastating impact of AI chatbots on news traffic.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/10/googles-ai-overviews-are-killing-traffic-for-publishers