Are Google’s AI Features a Threat to Web Traffic?
Google is facing mounting pressure from independent publishers who claim the company’s AI Overview feature is damaging their businesses by reducing website traffic and undermining their ability to compete for readers.
As a result, the Independent Publishers Alliance has filed a formal complaint with the European Commission, alleging that Google is guilty of abusing its market power in online search through its AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional website links.
The complaint argues that Google’s AI Overviews cause “significant harm to publishers, including news publishers in the form of traffic, readership and revenue loss”.
The complaint
Publishers say they cannot opt out of having their content used for AI summaries without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results entirely.
“Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google’s AI large language model (LLM) training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google’s general search results page,” the complainants say.
“That’s not just a tech issue – it’s an existential threat to independent journalism and the open web,” Humphrey Sule, CEO of Hunt-Hills, writes on LinkedIn.
The complaint has been supported by The Movement for an Open Web and British non-profit Foxglove Legal Community Interest Company, with similar complaints filed with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority.
Foxglove’s co-Executive Director, Rosa Curling, says: “That’s why with this complaint, Foxglove and our partners are urging the European Commission, along with other regulators around the world, to take a stand and allow independent journalism to opt out.”
The impact on website traffic
Multiple studies indicate that Google’s AI Overviews have altered the landscape of website traffic, with research revealing decreases of between 30% and 70% depending on the search terms used.
According to data analysis firm BrightEdge, AI Overviews have caused impressions to rise 49% across the web, yet clicks have declined by 30%.
Gisele Navarro, Managing Editor of HouseFresh, has experienced this trend firsthand: “A few weeks ago, we noticed a spike,” she says, referring to the increased appearances of her website in Google Search results.
“But at the same time, clicks are trending down. So Google is showing our links more often, but no one clicks. It correlates with AI Overviews.”
The data suggests that around 60% of Google searches are now “zero-click”, meaning users never visit a single website after receiving their AI-generated summary.
“This is not just a business model debate,” says Mohammed Husamaddin, VP of Business Development at Naseej. “It’s a broader question about how knowledge is created, validated and consumed in the digital age.
“Publishers have long played a role in research, education and journalism.
“As AI systems increasingly become the public’s first point of reference, the implications stretch far beyond individual companies.”
Concerns over Google’s AI mode
In May, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced that, following the success of AI Overview, the company was intensifying its focus on AI with the introduction of ’AI Mode’.
AI Mode, akin to platforms like ChatGPT, delivers mini articles answering user queries by aggregating data from multiple websites.
This mode essentially eliminates the need to visit external sites, raising concerns for businesses reliant on SEO and web traffic.
Lily Ray, Vice President of SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive, warns that “if Google makes AI Mode the default in its current form, it’s going to have a devastating impact on the internet.
“It will severely cut into the main source of revenue for most publishers and it will disincentivise content creators who rely on organic search traffic, which is millions of websites, maybe more.”
Elsewhere, Barry Adams, Founder of SEO firm Polemic Digital, believes the situation could worsen as Google’s ’AI Mode’ becomes more widely adopted.
“I expect that the amount of clicks that go from Google’s AI Mode to the web will be about half, and that’s in the optimistic scenario,” he explains.
“It could be the difference between having a viable publishing business and going bankrupt.”
Google’s perspective on AI integration
Google has responded to the criticism by emphasising its continued commitment to driving traffic to websites.
A Google spokesperson has stated that the company “sends billions of clicks to websites each day”.
“New AI experiences in Search enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered,” the company says.
Google’s leadership team has also been eager to calm anxieties.
“If anything over the last year, it’s clear to us the breadth of where we are sending people to is increasing,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google explains.
“I expect that to be true with AI Mode as well.”
Likewise, Nick Fox, Google’s Senior Vice President of Knowledge and Information, maintains that “the web is thriving.
“There’s probably no company that cares more about the health and the future of the web than Google,” he says.
Nevertheless, business owners are deeply concerned by how rapidly the internet is changing.
“As someone running an independent media business, I see the damage this is already causing,” says Chris Dicker, CEO of CANDR Media Group.
“There’s no sustainable value exchange here and unless that changes, the digital ecosystem risks collapsing.”
“We’re simply asking for what is fair.”
