A new study warns that Google’s AI Overviews are causing a sharp drop in traffic to news websites. Click-through rates can fall by up to 79% when links are shown below the AI summaries. Media executives see this as a serious threat, since many users get all the information they need from the AI responses and no longer visit the original sources.
A separate study by the U.S.-based think tank Pew Research Center confirmed this trend. British publishers are already seeing major losses in traffic and have filed a complaint with the Competition and Markets Authority over content misuse and Google’s monopolistic behavior.