Google AI tools are gutting publisher traffic

wtg

Google’s AI Overviews and other AI-powered tools, including chatbots, are devastating traffic for news publishers, per a Wall Street Journal report.

Now that people can simply ask a chatbot for answers – sometimes generated from news content taken without a publisher’s knowledge – there’s no need to click on Google’s blue links. That means referrals to news sites are plummeting, cutting off the traffic publishers need to sustain quality journalism.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/10/googles-ai-overviews-are-killing-traffic-for-publishers/

wtg

Here's a non-paywall version of the WSJ article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/news-sites-are-getting-crushed-by-google-s-new-ai-tools/ar-AA1Gq8Bn

CHAS

AI has not appeared at a most opportune time.

pique

Except AI is often dead wrong. People should not be depending on AI answers.

My first realization of this was when I googled to find out what the penalties are for registering a vehicle past the deadline. AI said six months jail time!

ShiroKuro

@pique said in Google AI tools are gutting publisher traffic:

Except AI is often dead wrong. People should not be depending on AI answers.

Exactly.

But because it's fast and convenient, far too many people are happy to just go with that.

Axtremus

Looking forward to the day when AI will train on mostly AI generated data.

Mik

It will be interesting to see how AI fares when there are far fewer websites being updated as their business model died.

ShiroKuro

What @Axtremus ajd @Mik are describing is how we get to increase by levels of slop and enshittification.
Eventually there will be no content left.

wtg

To @ShiroKuro 's point

WTF-Beta

Google AI tools are gutting publisher traffic