Don’t Blame AI: Is Google Algorithm Update The Reason For Lost Search Traffic?

Ask around about AI’s effect on search results, and you’ll hear most publishers talk about what feels like drastic drops in traffic and visibility.

According to new research from the UK, that feeling is more than just anecdotal. But AI isn’t the main culprit to blame.

“Around six in ten of the UK’s biggest news websites have seen a drop in their visibility in Google search results in 2025 so far,” writes Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt, highlighting what appears to be the result of an algorithm update that Google implemented in June. 

 

How People Think About AI’s Role In Journalism And Society

There is a clear ‘comfort gap’ between AI- and human-led news. On average, only 12% are comfortable with news made entirely by AI; this rises to 21% with a ‘human in the loop’, 43% when a human leads with some AI help, and 62% for entirely human-made news (an increase of 4 percentage points since 2024).

 

AI Companies Steal Publisher Traffic Then Undermine Trust By Getting Answers Wrong

The dangers of using generative AI platforms to surface news information have been highlighted in a devastating new report by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC. … Using a variety of news related questions, the research analysed the accuracy of answers given by the leading AI companies scraping news content: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini. The research points to a generally corrosive impact of AI answer engines on the news ecosystem.

 

Data Snags: B2C Marketers Face Challenges In Unifying Sources

B2C marketers are still plagued by challenges in managing data across sources. For instance, 69% see data unification as a complex pain point. Yet 53% rate their data strategy as very effective  —  up from 46% last year.

Bot Traffic Jam: What Often-Unprotected Publishers Need To Know

AI scraping isn’t the only behind-the-scenes bot activity that publishers need to keep an eye on.

Of course, any business — publishing or otherwise — is susceptible to these bots, which DataDome calls “the most relentless threats to online businesses and a primary driver of digital fraud.”

In fact, according to its 2025 Global Bot Security Report, large language model (LLM) crawler traffic (usually associated with genAI training) has nearly quadrupled across its customer base, from 2.6% of all verified bot traffic in January to over 10% by August.

 

Rethinking Subscriber Growth; AI As The Publisher’s Edge

I believe AI can help publishers perform at scale. Rather than fear the risks associated with AI, how can we embrace it for the opportunities it presents? 

 

Good News/Bad News On Where Americans Are Getting Their News

At a time when many Americans no longer read newspapers, the percentage citing social-media apps as their regular source of news has been growing, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. In fact, X has the greatest percentage of users regularly getting their news there — 57% — although that is down slightly from a high of 59%.

 

Shared Goals, Separate Systems: Bridge The Gap Between Marketing And Customer Service With Unified Tools

Improving customer experience (CX) increases revenue while reducing customer-related expenses, making customer-centricity fundamental to operational strategy. Subsequently, marketing leaders are prioritizing more alignment and collaboration with CX and customer service to better understand and extend their reach across the customer lifecycle. However, organizational silos, different KPIs, and disconnected tools and data prevent long-term alignment, blocking business benefits.

The Future Of Advertising: How AI, Automation, Biometrics, And More Will Shape Tomorrow

Perhaps it’s because this decade arrived with such an epically sad-trombone pandemic-plagued plop, but it feels almost surreal to already be past the halfway point.  

What’s even more surreal, considering the rapid strides made in just the last few years with something like AI, is trying to predict what the next decade might bring. But that’s exactly what WPP Media has done for its Advertising In 2030 report. 

“One of the most striking changes in expert opinion in our updated study is the increased confidence in the applicability of generative AI as a creative tool, reflecting the major advances in AI since the beginning of the decade,” writes WPP Media’s Kate Scott-Dawkins of the new report.

 

Google Appears To Prioritize Global Newsbrands Over Local Ones For Breaking News Events

Barry Adams, a specialized SEO consultant for news publishers at Polemic Digital, told Press Gazette: “For critical breaking news events, Google’s Top Stories algorithms have a strong preference for news publishers that have a high degree of authority and trust. … For those kinds of news events, Google wants to make sure it shows articles from only the most reliable new sources. This sometimes means that local news providers miss out, as they lack the authority signals Google gives preference to.”

 

Pinching The Press: Struggling Newspapers Need More State Funding

Forgive us for being skeptical. Sure, something is better than nothing. But grants and tax cuts for newspapers are so easy to scrap when desperate legislatures are looking for money.

 

People Still Largely Prefer Humans To Create Content, Not AI

About three in four Americans want humans to create news and entertainment content, according to the Ipsos Consumer Tracker. Two in three want humans making their marketing and even art content.

Mind The Gap: AI Search Traffic May Be Rising, But Conversion-Efficiency Doesn’t Compare To Organic 

Even as AI’s takeover of search gets so much attention, it’s important to remember one of the insights made clear by BrightEdge’s recent research: AI referral traffic does not necessarily mean real-life conversions.

“AI search functions as a research channel, not a conversion channel,” says the BrightEdge report, which analyzed thousands of search queries and sites from January through August, only to find “near-zero direct conversions tracked.” 

Compared to organic search, which consistently saw between 1.2% and 1.4% conversion rates, AI search is seeing an “efficiency gap [that’s] actually increasing over time.”

 

AI Referral Traffic ‘Not Making Up For Search Losses’: How Publishers Can Respond

Growing referral traffic from AI is nowhere near making up for losses from search since the arrival of Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, leading publishers have said. … Representatives … agreed there is no meaningful value exchange from AI bot traffic to websites and that publishers need to bolster themselves via the use of human experts and original content.

 

SMBs Are Doing More Than Ever. So Why Is Confidence Failing?

While you might be tempted to only use social media, tried-and-true channels, like email and SMS, are reemerging — delivering strong results with less cost and complexity. 44% of SMBs say email is their most effective channel — nearly double from last year.

 

Shoppers Trust GenAI More Than Brand Websites For Purchase Advice

Generative AI (genAI) is the second most preferred source for purchase recommendations among genAI users worldwide, with users nearly twice as likely to use genAI than retailer/brand websites or apps, according to January 2025 data from Accenture.

Spending Surge: Digital Advertising Grew 16% in Q2 (New Report)

Ad revenue grew more than 10% in Q2, with digital advertising nearing 16% growth, continuing what EMARKETER calls “a trend of steady gains in 2025 despite tariff headwinds.”

That digital ad growth, as calculated by Madison and Wall, is more than the 15% growth seen in Q1 and accounts for an approximate 70% share of all U.S. ad spend.

 

ChatGPT Referral Traffic Is Down -52% Since July 21st

I pulled from our dataset of 1+ billion ChatGPT citations and 1+ million referral visits from ChatGPT to figure out what’s going on: ChatGPT is shifting towards sites that provide ‘answers’, and the long tail of citations is shrinking as a result.

 

The Gen AI Cart: Shoppers More Willing To Let AI Handle Transactions

Consumers are more likely to use Gen AI for shopping, but many have lingering privacy concerns, according to a study by the email-text firm Omnisend. Of the 1,224  surveyed, only 32% are now reluctant to allow artificial intelligence (AI) to handle transactions, down from 66% in February. 

 

The State of Digital Trust in 2025

As AI hype accelerates and Big Tech’s influence expands, consumers are demanding more than just convenience, they’re demanding accountability. In 2025, trust has evolved from a compliance checkbox into a central consumer concern that brands need to take into account.

AI Media Buying: How Publishers Are Boosting Efficiency With AI & Automation

When the majority of marketers are intent on doing a specific something, you know it’s probably a solid choice.

And something all involved in the publishing game should pay attention to.

So what really got my attention from the latest DoubleVerify research is not so much the 42% of marketers who’ve already leveraged third-party AI or automation for media bidding, but the 49% who plan on taking advantage of these for their advertising inventory.

 

Publishers Fuzzy On Email: They’re Not Using It To Drive Revenue, Engagement

Few publishers are using email to its maximum advantage, judging by a study from Wunderkind. Of the publishing professionals surveyed, 84% see email as an important channel, but only 8% say it is a critical part of their strategy. 

 

The X Factor: How Generation X Is Quietly Driving Trillions In Consumer Spending

For years, Gen X has been dubbed “the forgotten generation” in media, policy, and even marketing campaigns. Skipped over or bundled in with Boomers or Millennials, this small but mighty generation has quietly become the engine of global consumer spending.

 

A/B Testing In Marketing 2025

An overwhelming 99% of marketers report their A/B testing programs are at least somewhat successful, with nearly half (49%) achieving best-in-class outcomes.  … Customer retention rate (46%) and conversion rate (45%) are the two most important metrics, emphasizing the need for both long-term loyalty and immediate impact.

AI Search Shake-Up: ChatGPT Gaining Ground Against Google

How much ground has ChatGPT made up against Google in the battle for AI search supremacy?

It would have been an absurd question to ask a few years ago, but as AI has disrupted search as users know it, it’s a question worthy of posing today, even as Google ups its own efforts and increases the occurrence of AI Overviews in its search results.

Earlier this year, one report had Google seeing 30 times more visitors than its nearest competitor, with 16.5 billion to ChatGPT’s 517 million. Now, a separate report by HigherVisibility comparing recent numbers highlights how much the game has changed in the last few months.

“Google’s dominance is eroding,” says the report, which compared its own survey of 1,500 respondents in February to its identical August survey, finding that Google’s share of searches dropped from 73% to 67% while ChatGPT usage tripled from 4.1% to 12.5%.

 

The Web Has A New System For Making AI Companies Pay Up

A new licensing standard aims to let web publishers set the terms of how AI system developers use their work. On Wednesday, major brands like Reddit, Yahoo, Medium, Quora, and People Inc. announced support for Really Simple Licensing (RSL), an open content licensing standard that enables publishers to outline how bots should pay to scrape their sites for AI training data. They’re hoping the collective action gives them leverage to get AI companies on board.

 

A Marketer’s Guide to AI Agents 2025 

AI agents are shifting marketing from programmed automation to autonomous intelligence. These new tools can execute complex tasks without step-by-step instructions. They can make decisions and adapt to changing conditions independently. In 2025, most organizations will remain in early phases, focusing on internal productivity implementation while customer-facing agents are maturing more slowly.

 

High On GenAI: Most Marketers Are Using It And Seeing Results

Marketers — including those on the email team — have wholeheartedly embraced artificial intelligence (AI), judging by a new study from Outcomes Rocket: State of AI in Marketing 2025, conducted by Prolific. Of the professionals surveyed, 93.5% … are now using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) daily at work and 89.5% are employing AI in general.

Beyond Recognition: LLMs Favor AI Agents & AI-Assisted Content (New Report)

It’s likely I write so much about AI in search because, well, between Google’s ubiquitous overviews and ChatGPT’s emerging rise as an alternative to Google and its most go-to function, search is the easiest entry for the masses to encounter AI.

And while Google doesn’t appear to penalize or reward pages for their use of AI when it comes to search rankings, a recent study found that large language models (LLMs) themselves do prefer content created by other LLMs.

 

The Substack AI Report

Based on our results, a typical AI-using publisher is 45 or over, more likely to be a man, and tends to publish in categories like Technology and Business. He’s not using AI to generate full posts or images. Instead, he’s leaning on it for productivity, research, and to proofread his writing. Most who use AI do so daily or weekly and have been doing so for over six months.

 

AI Bots Bombard Publisher Websites With ‘No Meaningful Value Exchange’

Unwanted AI scraping of publisher websites is placing a costly financial burden on publishers, according to one leading industry executive. Chris Dicker, chief executive of Candr Media Group and board member of the Independent Publishers Alliance, said that the publisher’s Trusted Reviews website was taken down multiple times on 16 August when it was scraped 1.6 million times in a day. This was up from a previous record of 1.2 million scrapes on the site a day earlier.

 

Swatting The Bots: Publishers Are The Most Likely Group To Block Them

It should come as no surprise that other businesses besides publishing are beset by AI bots scraping their sites. But media organizations are most likely to block the offenders, judging by a study from ImmuniWeb.

Steady Traffic Reports: Are AI Search Fears Actually Overblown?

As publishers consider the effects of AI on search — watching their own site analytics, hearing others’ stories, reading the statistics that at times tell multiple sides of the same story — another study has come out that appears to be saying, well, it might be much ado about nothing.

“New data from Chartbeat suggests that ‘search’ as a source of total traffic to major news publishers has remained stable over the last year,” writes Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt of a study that looked at more than six years of traffic for just 565 news sites.

 

AI Google, OpenAI Narrative Shifts: What The Latest Data Reveals

Recent data has reignited debates over artificial intelligence (AI), showcasing moments where human reasoning and creativity surpass top AI models. Meanwhile, data from NP Digital shows most marketers are maintaining or seeing gains in site visits even as debates about AI Overviews stifling publishers rage on.

 

Half Of Journalists Use Generative AI, New Survey Shows

European journalists are increasingly using generative artificial intelligence tools in the newsroom despite concerns the technology could spur fake news and erode trust, a new survey shows. Just more than half of the 286 journalists surveyed in Belgium and the Netherlands said they used generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT …

 

The State Of Sales And Marketing Report  

Similar to the AI usage patterns we saw among salespeople, marketers also tend to employ the technology for content creation and other communication-related tasks. The top-ranked uses of AI are generating social media posts (62%), ad copy (58%) and blog articles (56%), followed by summarizing content (53%).

Sum And Substance: How Journalism, Earned Media Shape AI Search 

The recent State of Journalism report from Muck Rack highlighted the AI tools that are being used for journalistic work, from generative platforms and transcription tools to those built specifically for their newsrooms.

Now, a new report from Muck Rack is showing how much of a driver that journalistic work is for AI and its search citations, with 95% of links cited found to be non-paid coverage, 27% of which are journalistic content.

 

Google CTRs Are Crashing: Position #1 CTR Down 32% Post AI Overview Rollout

Google organic click-through rates for ranking position #1 dropped from 28% to 19% (32% decline) while that of position #2 dropped from 20.83% to 12.60% (39% decline) from 2024 to 2025. Organic click-through rates for positions #6 to #10 increased in 2025 by 30.63% in 2025 as compared to 2024.

 

The Rise of AI Search Archetypes

Our research [shows] people prefer different platforms for different needs. … Conversational AI is favored for summarized answers (46%), creative ideas (39%), product and service details (45%), and how-to guidance (44%). Search engines still lead for product/service details (70%) and business info (63%). Social media dominates for reviews (48%) — as do traditional search engines through means like Google reviews. 

 

2025 Organic Search Engine Trends

Marketers are adapting to AI overviews. Their focus now? Clear, scannable content that answers questions upfront. Structured data, brand mentions, and conversational formats are more important than ever. The goal isn’t just to rank. It’s to show up in the spots users see first.