Key Points:

• DCN’s member survey shows median Google Search referrals to premium publishers fell 10% over eight weeks, with non-news brands down 14% and news publishers down 7%.
• Traffic declines peaked with news referrals plunging 16% the week of May 25 and non-news down 17% the week of June 22.
• DCN CEO Jason Kint says Google’s AI Overviews reduce clicks to publishers, creating “zero-click” results that threaten journalism, entertainment and the open web.

News publishers have seen a significant decline in online traffic from Google Search since the company rolled out its artificial intelligence-generated search summaries by default, according to new data from industry group Digital Content Next (DCN).

Based on an eight-week survey that ended in June, DCN members reported an average traffic decline of 10 percent compared to the first half of 2024. Non-news publishers saw the steepest losses — around 14 percent lower traffic — while news publishers saw their traffic decline by around 7 percent.

Traffic dips outnumbered gains by a margin of two to one, DCN’s survey revealed.

“The worst weeks were brutal,” Jason Kint, the Chief Executive Officer of DCN, said in a report published on Friday. He cited a 16 percent drop for news brands the week of May 25 and a 17 percent decline for non-news publishers the week of June 22.

“These aren’t random fluctuations,” Kint affirmed. “They are sustained losses hitting both breaking news publishers and evergreen entertainment brands.”

The survey results coincide with Google’s introduction of AI Overviews — now branded as AI Mode — which generate summaries that appear at the top of search results. The feature draws from publisher content, Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, and other sources, but often eliminates the need for users to click through to original sites.

Kint said the change has transformed Google Search from “the discovery engine for our daily lives into a place where all traffic dead ends at Google.” Citing research from the Pew Research Center, he noted that users are “significantly less likely” to click links when AI Overviews are present.

For publishers, the trend means fewer readers, ad impressions, and subscription opportunities. “For the open web, it means less discovery, diversity, and accountability in the information ecosystem,” Kint said.

Earlier this month, a Google spokesperson claimed its use of AI search summaries were “driving more queries and higher-quality clicks,” a statement that Kint said was “utterly unsupported by data.”

Kint pointed to DCN’s analysis of 19 member companies — including national newsrooms and global entertainment brands — which reflected a steady decline in traffic nearly every week in May and June.

Kint also connected the traffic losses to broader antitrust concerns. Google controls more than 95 percent of the mobile search market, and a remedies order is pending in a federal lawsuit that accused Google of operating a search-based monopoly. Earlier this year, in a separate antitrust case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice, a federal judge ruled that Google also operates a monopoly in the digital advertising industry.

Nearly 80 percent of DCN members say their digital revenue comes from advertising, which largely depends on reach and traffic. Kint said Google’s shift toward AI-generated answers follows a similar path in Google exerting too much demand and control over how news publishers operate their websites, noting similar Google-backed initiatives involving “featured snippets” and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Both centralized control over distribution and weakened publisher economics, he argued.

Kint called for transparency on AI Overview click-through rates, a way for publishers to block use of their content without losing search visibility, fair licensing arrangements, and regulatory oversight treating AI Mode as part of Google’s search monopoly.

“The open web is worth defending,” he said. “And the data is clear: the time to act is now.”

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Disclosure: The author of this story is an editorial contributor to Digital Content Next, but was not involved in the survey or the creation of Kint’s column. Kint and the author are connected and engaged on several social media platforms.