Search traffic to publishers is collapsing, and the numbers now differ by size

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism surveyed 280 media leaders from 51 countries. They expect search engine referrals to fall 43% over three years. That is a forecast, not a measurement. The measured numbers behind it are already ugly.

Search traffic to news sites has already dropped by a third in a single year globally, according to Chartbeat data for more than 2,500 news sites cited by the Reuters Institute. The figure is higher in the US.

Google's AI Overviews already sit at the top of about 10% of US search results, the report says. Referrals from ChatGPT remain, in its words, "little more than a rounding error".

Small publishers take the hardest hit

Chartbeat's size breakdown, reported exclusively by Axios and covered by Search Engine Journal in March, shows where the losses concentrate. Small publishers, those averaging 1,000 to 10,000 daily page views, lost 60% of their search referral traffic over two years. Mid-sized publishers lost 47%. Large publishers, above 100,000 daily page views, lost 22%.

Page views from Google Search fell 34% between December 2024 and December 2025. Google Discover fell 15% over the same period. ChatGPT referrals grew more than 200% in that window, but chatbots still account for less than 1% of all publisher page view referrals. That growth is nowhere near replacing what search lost.

"It is not clear what comes next," Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute, said in the report. "Publishers fear that AI chatbots are creating a new convenient way of accessing information that could leave news brands, and journalists, out in the cold."

Behaviour differs by content type too. News and media sites get the highest total page views from AI chatbot referrals but the lowest engagement per article. Axios reads that as readers using news citations for quick fact-checks rather than deeper reading. Utilitarian sites, health advice and gardening tips, see fewer referrals but more page views per article.

Some publishers are ready to cut Google off

Nieman Journalism Lab reported in July on a Wall Street Journal story showing traffic declines of more than 40% for some publications between June 2025 and June 2026, according to Semrush data. The Guardian and the BBC saw gains. Cloudflare says bots now make up more than half of all web traffic. From 15 September it will block multi-purpose crawlers that scrape for both search indexing and AI training unless site owners opt out.

USA Today Co. chief executive Mike Reed told the Journal the company may turn off Google's access completely if search traffic keeps declining. Reddit is reevaluating its $60 million per year deal with Google. Politico and Reuters are both considering limiting Google bot access or adding registration walls, Nieman Lab reported. People Inc. chief executive Neil Vogel said blocking Google entirely is "100% on the table".

Google's counter-move came in August: a "Preferred Sources" button publishers can embed on their own sites, following a May rollout into AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google said people had already selected over 345,000 unique sources through the method, and that users are twice as likely to click through to a preferred source.

Whether a button offsets a 60% drop is a different question. Mark Stenberg wrote in Adweek that no publisher wants to make do without Google, but many are increasingly prepared to.