The deployment of Google’s AI Overviews is precipitating a severe and sustained collapse in referral traffic to digital publishers, jeopardizing their economic viability. This trend is backed by extensive empirical evidence and has ignited significant antitrust scrutiny and demands for regulatory intervention and fair compensation. For security professionals, this shift represents a significant change in the information ecosystem, potentially altering how threat intelligence and security news are consumed and monetized.
A recent study by the Pew Research Center, analyzing 68,879 unique Google searches from 900 U.S. adults in March 2025, provides concrete data on the impact1. The findings indicate that users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in only 8% of visits. In contrast, those who did not see an AI summary clicked nearly twice as often, at 15% of visits. Perhaps more critically for publishers, users clicked on a link within the AI summary itself in just 1% of all visits to pages that featured one. This data suggests a fundamental shift in user behavior, where the need to visit source websites is greatly diminished.
Quantifying the Traffic Collapse
The empirical data from multiple sources paints a stark picture of declining traffic. A survey by Digital Content Next (DCN) of 19 major US publishers found a median 10% decline in Google Search referral traffic in the eight weeks following the AI Overview rollout2. The impact varied by sector, with non-news brands experiencing a more severe 14% drop compared to a 7% decline for news publishers. During the worst weeks, some publishers saw devastating drops of 16-17%. Analysis from Authoritas suggests that a website ranked first for a query could lose approximately 79% of its traffic if its result appears below an AI Overview3. A separate report found a per-query click-through rate loss of almost 50% when an AI Overview appears.
Similarweb data indicates a broader industry trend towards zero-click searches4. The average zero-click search rate for the top 100 publisher sites increased from 50.5% to 52.7% over one year. Broader industry data shows a more dramatic jump from 56% to nearly 69%. This trend directly impacts the revenue models of publishers who rely on web traffic for advertising income and subscription conversions. The economic model of funding quality journalism and technical content creation through web advertising is under direct threat.
Publisher Case Studies and Anecdotal Evidence
First-hand accounts from publishers corroborate the quantitative data. The UK’s Professional Publishers Association (PPA) submitted evidence to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) detailing specific case studies5. One lifestyle magazine ranking first for a “how to get rid of [insect]” query saw its click-through rate plummet from 5.1% to 0.6% after the introduction of AI Overviews. An automotive publisher reported a 25% traffic drop to articles ranking number one in organic search, despite a 7% increase in overall search visibility.
A product review publisher found that AI Overviews appear for 30-37% of its targeted keywords, with a 25-50% lower click-through rate when they are present. Industry executives have described the situation in dire terms. Helen Havlak, publisher of The Verge, stated that “The extinction-level event is already here,” noting that some smaller publishers have already gone out of business due to these traffic declines. This sentiment is echoed by other executives across the publishing industry.
Market Dominance and Antitrust Considerations
The context of Google’s market dominance is critical to understanding the implications of AI Overviews. Google controls over 95% of the mobile search market and has been ruled an illegal monopoly in search and ad tech by U.S. federal courts6. Analysis from Enders Analysis of Sistrix data for major UK national titles found a correlation between a decline in search visibility of up to 80% since 2019 and the introduction of various AI features7.
The PPA’s evidence to the UK’s CMA directly ties AI Overviews to this monopoly power, arguing the feature should be subject to regulatory oversight. This situation occurs against a backdrop of nearly 10,000 journalism jobs lost in the past three years, creating a particularly dire environment for this traffic collapse. The combination of market dominance and control over information discovery channels creates significant concerns about the diversity and independence of information sources.
Source Concentration and Potential Bias
The selection of sources within AI Overviews raises questions about potential bias and favoritism. According to the Pew Research Center, the most frequently cited sources in AI summaries are Wikipedia, YouTube, and Reddit1. YouTube is owned by Google parent Alphabet, and Google signed a reported multi-million dollar licensing deal with Reddit for AI training data, creating potential conflicts of interest.
Government websites appear more frequently in AI summaries (6%) than in standard search results (2%). News websites account for a steady but small 5% of links in both traditional results and AI Overviews. This concentration on a few large platforms, including Google-owned properties, could further centralize information control and reduce diversity of sources available to users seeking information.
Industry Response and Demands
Google has consistently dismissed reports of traffic loss, calling studies “inaccurate and based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the roll out”8. A company spokesperson claims that AI features “enable people to ask even more questions, creating new opportunities for websites to be discovered.” However, search engine optimization experts and publishers cite first-party data from Google Search Console that directly contradicts these public statements.
Despite publicly downplaying the impact, Google is simultaneously seeking licensing deals with approximately 20 national news outlets for AI projects, acknowledging the value of their content. The publishing industry has unified around several key demands, including transparency through auditable data in Google Search Console showing how often a site’s content appears in AI Overviews, a true opt-out mechanism that doesn’t penalize publishers in organic search rankings, fair compensation for content used to train AI models, and regulatory action treating AI search as an extension of Google’s existing monopoly.
Relevance to Security Professionals
For security teams and professionals, this shift in information discovery has several implications. The concentration of information sourcing to a few dominant platforms could affect the diversity and timeliness of threat intelligence feeds. If security publications and blogs experience significant traffic declines, their ability to fund quality research and reporting on emerging threats may be compromised.
The changing patterns of how technical information is consumed may require security awareness teams to adapt their content strategies. As users increasingly expect immediate answers without visiting source websites, security education may need to be delivered through different channels or formats. The potential reduction in independent security research publications could impact the overall security community’s access to diverse perspectives and technical analysis.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
The deployment of Google’s AI Overviews represents a significant shift in how information is discovered and consumed online. The empirical evidence demonstrates substantial declines in referral traffic to publishers, with click-through rates halved in many cases. This trend threatens the economic viability of many content creators, including those in the security and technology sectors.
The changing user behavior toward longer, conversational queries that trigger AI answers is training users to expect instant answers without visiting websites. This shift challenges the fundamental economics of web content creation, where creating quality content no longer guarantees traffic or revenue. As the competitive landscape evolves with Apple executives suggesting AI may replace traditional search and OpenAI launching an AI-powered browser, the entire ecosystem of information discovery appears to be undergoing rapid transformation.
The security community should monitor these developments closely, as they may affect how threat intelligence is disseminated, how security awareness training is delivered, and how technical research is funded and accessed. The potential centralization of information sources through AI-driven summaries could have implications for the diversity and independence of security information available to professionals.
References
- S. Anderson, “How Google’s AI Overviews work and how they’re changing search,” Pew Research Center, Jul. 22, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/07/22/how-googles-ai-overviews-work-and-how-theyre-changing-search/
- J. Kint, “Publisher search traffic declines post AI Overview rollout,” Digital Content Next, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2025/08/15/publisher-search-traffic-declines-post-ai-overview-rollout/
- Authoritas, “Impact of AI Overviews on organic click-through rates,” Authoritas, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.authoritas.com/blog/impact-ai-overviews-organic-ctr/
- Similarweb, “Zero-click search rates analysis 2024-2025,” Similarweb, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.similarweb.com/corp/blog/zero-click-search-rates-analysis/
- Professional Publishers Association, “Submission to the Competition and Markets Authority on AI Overviews,” PPA, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.ppa.co.uk/policy-and-campaigns/submission-to-cma-ai-overviews/
- U.S. vs. Google LLC, “Findings of fact and conclusions of law,” U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/files/23-108findings.pdf
- J. Webb, “Google search visibility decline for UK publishers,” Enders Analysis, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.endersanalysis.com/content/google-search-visibility-decline-uk-publishers
- Google LLC, “Response to AI Overview traffic impact claims,” Google Search Central Blog, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/response-ai-overview-traffic-impact
