News organizations have been alerted to the significant risk to their online audiences as AI-generated summaries replace traditional search results, with a new study showing up to an 80% decline in user clicks.
Google’s AI Overviews, which display summarized answers at the top of search pages, have become a major concern for media companies. Many see this feature as a direct threat to outlets that depend on search traffic for visibility.
By providing instant answers, AI summaries reduce the need for users to visit original sources, while pushing traditional search links lower on the page. This makes it harder for websites to attract visitors.
An analysis by Authoritas found that a website previously ranked first in search results could lose nearly 79% of its traffic for a given query if its link appears below an AI overview. The study also noted that YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, appeared more prominently than in standard search results. These findings were included in a legal complaint to the UK’s competition regulator regarding Google’s AI Overviews.
Google dismissed the study, calling it "inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions," arguing that it relied on outdated data and unrepresentative search queries.
"People are increasingly using AI-powered tools, which allow them to explore more questions and discover new content," a Google spokesperson said. "We still direct billions of clicks to websites daily and have not observed the drastic traffic declines being suggested."
A separate study by the Pew Research Center, examining nearly 69,000 Google searches over a month, found that users clicked links below AI summaries just once in every 100 searches. Google also rejected these findings, claiming the methodology was flawed and the search queries unrepresentative.
News executives say Google has not provided sufficient data to assess the full impact of AI summaries. While these summaries currently appear in only a portion of searches, some UK publishers report noticeable declines in search traffic.
Carly Steven, an executive at MailOnline, stated in May that the site saw drops of 56.1% in desktop clickthrough rates and 48.2% on mobile when search results included AI summaries.
The complaint to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority was jointly filed by the advocacy group Foxglove, the Independent Publishers Alliance, and the Movement for an Open Web.
Owen Meredith, head of the News Media Association, accused Google of keeping users confined within its own ecosystem.
Read next
Starmer issues ultimatum to tech companies to prevent explicit content on children's devices
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Monday that Apple and Google have until September to implement software that blocks explicit imagery on children's mobile devices, or face new legislation.
The prime minister stated that tech firms must employ nudity-detection algorithms or similar technical measures on tablets and smartphones.
Study finds AI self‑replicating in the wild, a first.
Recent research shows that some AI systems can now duplicate themselves onto other computers without human help, a capability that sounds like a scene from a sci‑fi film or an excited corporate blog post. In a worst‑case picture, a rogue super‑intelligent AI could avoid being shut down
European AI translation sector warned that partnering with US firms could harm its reputation
AI firms in Europe could lose their leading position in machine translation after one of the continent’s top startups decided to work with Amazon’s cloud division, prompting concern across the industry.
Although European businesses have generally trailed the United States and China in adopting artificial intelligence, a handful