As Google charges ahead with AI-powered search, a battle is brewing over who controls the flow of online traffic—and who gets left behind.
At the center of the storm is AI Overviews, a flagship feature that offers summarized answers right on the search results page. While it’s great for users in a hurry, publishers and content creators are crying foul, with some reporting up to 30% traffic declines since the feature’s wider rollout in May 2025.
Google, for its part, says the sky isn’t falling.
A Summary That Steals the Click?
The promise of AI Overviews is straightforward: when a user asks a question, Google synthesizes the answer using its large language models, citing multiple sources but not necessarily requiring a click-through.
Critics argue that these AI snapshots are content cannibalism—scraping and summarizing information from publishers without rewarding them with traffic. A recent Pew Research study, highlighted by Ars Technica, claims that clicks could be cut by nearly half for affected queries. Publishers like those interviewed by The Indian Express report real-world impacts: a 25% drop in referral traffic, in some cases, and a scramble to find alternative revenue streams.
A GSQi analysis adds fuel to the fire: AI-generated search results currently drive less than 1% of traffic, but if trends continue, the long-term risk to publisher visibility and ad revenue is “significant.”
Google: It’s Not Us, It’s User Behavior
In a recent rebuttal covered by TechCrunch, Google flatly denied that its AI tools are killing publisher traffic. Instead, it claims AI Overviews are leading to “higher-quality” clicks—in other words, users who do click are more engaged.
Google insists that organic traffic has remained stable year-over-year and says shifts in user behavior—more mobile usage, desire for quick answers—are the real culprits. The company has not released detailed metrics to support this.
A Gadgets 360 piece echoes Google’s defense, framing AI Overviews as a way to enhance user experience by reducing friction and helping people get to relevant info faster.
Still, the lack of transparency has left analysts and publishers skeptical.
Publishers Push Back
Some publishers are calling Google’s bluff. With 13% of all searches now triggering AI responses, according to PPC Land, many fear their carefully optimized content is being reduced to a snippet in someone else’s summary.
SEO professionals on X (formerly Twitter) are sharing data that paints a bleak picture: 32% drops in click-through rates for top-ranking pages and predictions that AI search could consume 10% of the market by year’s end. That’s billions of skipped clicks.
There’s a growing call for publishers to optimize for AI visibility, a shift that could mark the end of the blue link era. Some are even pivoting to paywalls, subscriptions, or syndicating content directly into platforms powered by LLMs.
One publisher told The AI Insider they’ve already shifted 40% of their content team to focus on LLM-friendly formats—structuring information into “entities” rather than traditional keyword SEO.
AI Search Is Coming—Ready or Not
Whether Google likes it or not, AI is already changing how search works. A Cognitive Today report suggests AI could power 40% of search traffic by mid-2026, forcing a strategic rethink across the content industry.
Google has offered little in the way of revenue sharing, unlike its rivals. OpenAI is experimenting with sharing revenue with content providers whose data powers ChatGPT. Per BBC Future, if Google doesn’t evolve its model, we could see an “apocalypse” in the publishing world, especially among smaller outlets.
Meanwhile, Google’s own dominance is under pressure. Once controlling 98% of search traffic, it’s now hovering closer to 92%, as users experiment with AI-first alternatives like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Google blames this erosion on external competition, not AI Overviews. But publishers aren’t convinced.
Can Both Sides Win?
The battle lines are drawn: Google wants to retain users by giving instant answers, while publishers need traffic to survive. It’s a high-stakes game where the winner will likely be whoever adapts fastest.
Experts recommend:
- Entity-based SEO to increase visibility in AI summaries
- Structured data markup to help LLMs interpret content context
- Traffic-sniping tactics, like embedding brand mentions in answerable questions
- Using AI traffic calculators to assess risk per query category
The end goal? Not just survival, but strategic positioning in a future where clicks aren’t guaranteed.
Final Click
Google insists its AI features support, not sabotage, the open web. But as traffic numbers tell a more complicated story, publishers are entering a new reality: adapt to AI or risk getting written out of the results entirely.
With AI shaping more of search—and more of the web’s value chain—the tension between access and attribution is only getting sharper.
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