Google has quietly launched a new pilot program aimed at paying some larger news publishers for the privilege of repurposing their content into artificial intelligence-generated search responses at a time when those types of responses are starting to dominate its search platform.
Around 100 publishers are participating in Google’s AI contribution pilot, according to tech publication The Information. The program compensates publishers when Google determines their content contributed significantly to responses generated through AI Overviews, AI Mode or Gemini.
Payments are determined on a case-by-case basis: At least one large publication has earned more than $1 million through the program, while smaller publications are pulling in around $50,000 to $60,000 since joining. A few publications have received well under $1,000 on a monthly basis, The Information said.
The pilot program comes at a time when Google has faced increased scrutiny for depriving publications of the referral traffic they depend upon to support their advertising businesses while exerting outsized control over the search and digital advertising markets, the latter of which has been the foundation for lawsuits against the tech giant over the past few years.
Google’s growing use of artificial intelligence in search is putting additional pressure on publisher traffic, with new data showing sharply lower click-through rates when AI-generated answers appear above traditional search results.
The first organic Google result received 20.02 percent of clicks in July when an AI Overview was absent, according to fresh data from Advanced Web Ranking. When an AI Overview appeared above the result, its click-through rate dropped to 9.69 percent, a decline of about 52 percent.
The impact extended further down the page. The second organic result fell from a 10.36 percent click-through rate without an AI Overview to 3.69 percent with one, while the third position dropped from 3.89 percent to 1.7 percent.
AI Overviews appeared on 43 percent of desktop search result pages measured by Advanced Web Ranking during July. The firm tracks roughly 1 million desktop and 750,000 mobile U.S. search result pages each month.
The data also showed a widening gap in searches that generated no outbound clicks. About 74.3 percent of searches containing an AI Overview ended without a click, compared with 53.6 percent of searches without one.
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