Generative AI didn’t just transform search results this past year; it upended how monetization works on the open web.
So how have digital publishers been faring in this new era of content discovery?
Uh, let’s just say things aren’t looking great.
As expected, the rise of zero-click AI chatbots and answer engines caused massive drop-offs in publisher referral traffic in 2025.
Publishers, typically a tight-lipped crowd, have been surprisingly candid about losing 20%, 30% and in some cases even as much as 90% of their traffic and revenue over the past year.
Some smaller publishers have already been forced to shut down, and more will no doubt join them in 2026, leaving advertisers with fewer partners and pushing more spend into the walled gardens.
But publishers aren’t taking these blows lying down.
Some are filing lawsuits against Big Tech companies and generative AI startups, seeking compensation for unauthorized content scraping and alleged copyright infringement. Publishers are also exploring models for making AI companies pay to access their content or use it in responses to queries. And, naturally, pubs are also looking for ways to turn AI tech to their advantage.
As we head into what will likely be another difficult year for publishers, here’s a temperature check on the sell side after a year in the generative AI era.
AI(Oh No)
The numbers are in, and the click-through rate (CTR) to websites plunges when Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) are present or ChatGPT is there to summarize the content.
Recent changes to Google’s search experience have been particularly hard on pubs, and simply linking a few sources in AIO results isn’t enough to help their traffic.
When an AIO is featured at the top of Google’s search page, just 1% of users click the links it cites, according to a July Pew Research study.
AIOs also ding the organic search results that appear below them. Just 8% of users click on the blue links under an AIO, compared with 15% who click a link when there’s no AIO present, as per Pew.
And Pew’s CTR numbers are actually relatively high compared to similar studies. Seer Interactive’s research from September puts Google’s organic click-through rate at just 1.6% when no AIO appears and .6% when an AIO is present.
Paid search results also experience huge drops in click-throughs from AI Overviews. The CTR for paid links drops from 13% when there’s no AIO to 6% with an AIO, according to Seer’s September numbers.
Both the Pew and Seer findings echo what The Mail Online has observed in its own data.
In May, Carly Steven, the Mail Online’s director of SEO and editorial e-commerce, told Press Gazette that its organic CTR averaged 13% on desktop and 20% on mobile. Those numbers dropped to 5% and 7%, respectively, when an AIO appeared at the top of the page.
News and blogs aren’t alone
Such traffic losses are increasingly hitting a wide range of publishers.
News orgs and recipe blogs were among the first and hardest hit by AI search summaries. But, as the year went on, AI search also began eating into ecommerce traffic.
In January, 91% of Google searches that featured an AI Overview were informational, whereas 6% included commerce-related keywords, according to Semrush. But, as of October, informational searches represented just 57% of searches featuring AIOs, with commercial searches at 19%.
Long-tail publishers are hurting the most, but large media conglomerates aren’t immune to the encroachment of AIOs across search keywords. For example, AIOs appeared on 35% of search keywords associated with People Inc.’s content in Q1. By the following quarter, that ratio grew to 55%.
Still, the good news – if you can call it that – is that Google users not clicking through to publisher sites doesn’t seem to be getting worse.
In fact, some data suggests users may actually be clicking more links as they get used to AI interfaces. The zero-click rate of search keywords that feature AI Overviews has actually dropped from more than 45% in January 2025 to 38% as of October, according to Semrush.
ChatGPT won’t save pubs
But Google is far from the only AI search platform gobbling up publisher referral traffic – and even those sending more traffic than others, like ChatGPT, aren’t enough to offset the losses.
ChatGPT is the biggest referrer of traffic among emerging AI chat and search interfaces. It sent 1.2 billion outgoing referrals to publisher sites between September and November, Digiday reported last month, citing data from Similarweb, a 52% year-over-year increase.
But don’t be too encouraged by growing referral numbers. They’re a drop in the bucket. Digiday also noted that traffic from all AI platforms combined accounts for just 1% of all publisher traffic, citing research from SEO platform Conductor.
And, besides, ChatGPT may not be sharing the wealth equally.
Certain publishers have disproportionately benefited from ChatGPT referrals over time, according to Josh Blyskal, answer engine optimization strategy and research lead at Profound. He noted that a 52% reduction in ChatGPT referrals to websites between July and August coincided with a 53% increase in citations to Wikipedia, Reddit and TechRadar.
Canaries in the coal mine
Still, the horror stories outnumber the far smaller number of publisher success stories with AI search referrals.
Travel blog The Planet D told Bloomberg it lost half its traffic in the months after Google launched AI Overviews in May 2024. It laid off staff in an attempt to survive. But traffic plummeted another 90% following those layoffs, forcing the blog, which was founded in 2008, to cease publication earlier this year.
Another small home improvement blog called Charleston Crafted told Bloomberg it lost 70% of its traffic between March and May 2024, resulting in a 65% decrease in ad revenue.
Music blog Stereogum lost 70% of its ad revenue this year, its founder Scott Lapatine wrote in November. He assigned the largest part of the blame to Google’s AI Overviews, but also noted that “Facebook and X’s deprioritization of links hurt, too.”
Going forward, Lapatine wrote, Stereogum plans to lean on its remaining audience for support by implementing paid subscription tiers, members-only music playlists and an on-site tip jar.
Such stories aren’t limited to small blogs either. AI search is also devastating big-name publishers, The Wall Street Journal reported in June, citing Similarweb.
Business Insider saw its organic search traffic fall by 55% between April 2022 and April 2025, leading the company to cut 21% of its staff in May. HuffPost’s desktop and mobile sites lost half of their search referrals over the same time period. And The New York Times saw search’s share of traffic to its desktop and mobile sites decline from 44% in 2022 to 37% in 2025.
So, what can publishers do other than panic and continue watching their traffic decline?
They need to get real about the existential threat of AI search and face it head-on. Beyond lawsuits and paywalls, they need bold innovation.
Here’s hoping we see plenty more of it from the sell side this year – otherwise, much of the open web might have to close for business.
