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Google’s algorithm changes last year led to a plummet in search engine traffic for news websites and publishers, and even resulted in the bankruptcy of some independent publishers, including Turkey’s Gazete Duvar.

The technology giant is now dealing another blow to online publishers through its artificial intelligence summaries.

Google’s Artificial Intelligence Overview feature is a service offered by the internet giant to compete with artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT. The feature offers short summaries generated by Gemini that appear at the top of search results. Below the summary, there are details such as links to the source and a “Show more” option.

In other words, when a user types a query into the Google search engine, they can get the answer in a summary without clicking on the links below. But this presents a serious risk, especially for websites that rely on Google Ads revenue and traditional search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.

Traffic of popular websites dropped

The introduction of the AI Overview has particularly affected traffic to sites that feature content such as holiday guides, health tips and product reviews.

According to Similarweb, search traffic to websites decreased by 55% between April 2022 and April 2025.

A report published by the Wall Street Journal indicates that traffic to many well-known news sites around the world is declining. Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile sites has more than halved in the last three years, while the Washington Post has seen a nearly identical decline.

Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng laid off about 21% of her staff in May, citing “extreme traffic declines beyond our control” as the reason for the layoffs.

The share of traffic from organic search to the New York Times’ desktop and mobile sites also fell to 36.5% in April 2025.

Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, predicts that traffic from Google will drop towards zero and says the company needs to improve its business model.

“Google is changing from a search engine to an answer engine,” Thompson said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

In an interview with the WSJ, Thompson and other industry leaders said they are trying to develop new strategies and are most concerned with building reader relationships.

Users don’t click on links

Google executives argue that the company is committed to sending traffic to the web and that people who click on links after seeing the AI Overview tend to spend more time on these sites. However, survey studies show a different picture.

According to a new study by the Pew Research Centre, only % of the 900 Google users in the US click on the source page specified as a result of a search that includes the Artificial Intelligence Overview summary. The rest are content with the short information provided by Google.

Moreover, according to the study, the most frequently cited sources in both AI summaries and traditional search results are Wikipedia, YouTube (also a Google subsidiary) and Reddit. 15% of the sources in AI summaries come from these three sites.

Referrals to government sites (e.g. with the ‘gov’ extension) are more common in AI summaries than in traditional search results. On the other hand, both AI summaries and traditional search results are equally likely to refer to news sites, at 5%.

Worse still, 404 Media, a website known for specialised technology news, noticed that a story about AI-assisted music production was not showing up in Google searches. This was because Artificial Intelligence Overview summarised the content of the story, but did not link to the actual story.

The site summarises the situation with the following statement: “The AI Overview ensures that information is presented in such a way that the source itself is never clicked on.”

SEO loses its impact

The effects of the AI Overview on SEO (search engine optimisation) are also remarkable.

According to the Register, the latest data showed that the click-through rate of the top-ranked site in searches with an AI summary fell by an average of 34.5%. Being on the first page is no longer as meaningful as it used to be.

AI often provides false information

Moreover, there is another risk: the reliability of artificial intelligence.

404 Media published a news article showing that one of the responses given by the feature in question was actually generated from another AI summary, which in turn was based on an AI source.

The margin of error increases as the information moves away from the main source. This situation is described by experts as “the vicious circle of information that leads to the collapse of artificial intelligence models themselves”.

When there are not enough sources of quality information, users are left with inaccurate and superficial content produced by artificial intelligence.

The advertising industry continues to work for Google

The revenues of websites and Google are based on the following advertising cycle: Websites allow people who use search engines such as Google free access to their content. Google redirects users to websites where they see adverts as well as content. Most websites make money from these adverts.

According to the BBC, an estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines, and around 90% of searches take place on Google. This means that websites rely heavily on Google to make money.

It is stated that the Artificial Intelligence Overview mode could therefore destroy the business model that has existed for 23 years.

However, Google experience no loss in this change, at least for now. Alphabet, the Google’s parent company, increased its revenues to a record level in the last quarter of 2024.

According to data released by the company, Google’s total revenue increased by 14% compared to last year, reaching $96.4 billion. According to the Register, the bulk of the revenue still comes from advertising: exactly $54.2 billion.

That’s because Google now places adverts directly in or around AI Overview summaries.

According to a study by SparkToro, by 2024, only 360 out of every 1,000 Google searches in the US led to sites that are not owned or advertised by Google. These rates are predicted to worsen with the rise of artificial intelligence summaries.

‘Desperation not demand’

While Google still dominates the market, rival AI-powered search engines such as Perplexity are slowly entering the competition.

According to Bank of America executive Muhammad Rasulnejat, Google’s spending of $14 billion on infrastructure investment in the last quarter alone points to “desperation in the face of competition”, not growing demand.

In addition to all this, the fact that the US Department of Justice still accuses Google of monopolisation creates a separate pressure. The Ministry is even demanding that Google divest its Chrome browser. The company’s recent advertising and artificial intelligence moves may further inflame these debates.