News companies have been warned of a “devastating impact” on online audiences as search results are replaced by AI summaries, after a new study claimed it caused up to 80% fewer clickthroughs.
The threat posed by Google’s AI Overviews, which summarise a search result with a block of text, has rapidly risen to the top of the concerns among media owners. Some regard it as an existential threat to outlets reliant on search result traffic.
A new analysis by the Authoritas analytics company has found that a site previously ranked first in a search result could lose about 79% of its traffic for that query if results were delivered below an AI overview. A second study by the Pew Research Center found users only clicked a link under an AI summary once every 100 times.
Google has disputed the findings, calling them “inaccurate and based on flawed assumptions”. A spokesperson said: “People are gravitating to AI-powered experiences, and AI features in search enable people to ask even more questions, creating new opportunities for websites to be discovered.”
Senior news executives say Google has repeatedly refused to share the data they need to calculate the impact. The MailOnline executive Carly Steven said in May the site was experiencing a large drop in clicks from search results featuring an AI summary, with clickthrough rates dropping by 56.1% on desktop and 48.2% on mobiles.
Owen Meredith, chief executive of the News Media Association, accused Google of trying to keep users “within its own walled garden”. “The situation as it stands is entirely unsustainable and will ultimately result in the death of quality information online,” he said.
