As concerns mount across the publishing industry over the impact of artificial intelligence on search traffic, Google is now pushing back, insisting that its AI tools aren’t killing publisher traffic, even as its own product strategy and external data suggest otherwise.
In a blog post published Wednesday, Google’s Head of Search, Liz Reid, disputed claims that the company’s AI-driven features are siphoning off clicks. Reid wrote that total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has remained “relatively stable” year-over-year, and even claimed that the “average click quality” — measured by whether users linger on a page — has “slightly increased.”
But there’s a catch: Google provided no specific metrics or transparent data to back its claims. And while Reid acknowledged that traffic has shifted from some sites to others, the company has not revealed which sites are gaining and which are losing, or how widespread the losses really are.
“User trends are shifting traffic to different sites,” Reid noted, adding that “people are increasingly seeking out and clicking on sites with forums, videos, podcasts, and posts where they can hear authentic voices and first-hand perspectives.”
What Reid doesn’t say is that much of this “authentic” traffic is no longer starting at Google. In fact, even within Google’s own executive ranks, there has been long-standing acknowledgment that search traffic is being diverted to platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and Amazon.
According to TechCrunch, Prabhakar Raghavan, now Google’s chief technologist, said in 2022, during a tech event, that nearly 40% of young users searching for places to eat begin on TikTok or Instagram, not Google Maps or Search. Similarly, Reddit has become the preferred destination for topic-based searches, prompting Google to recently add a dedicated “forums” filter.
Google’s AI Overviews and the Zero-Click Phenomenon
The anxiety gripping publishers isn’t without cause. The rise of “AI Overviews”, summaries powered by Google’s large language models that now appear at the top of many search queries, has transformed the way users interact with results. Rather than clicking through to news or publisher websites, users often get the answer immediately, leading to what’s known as a zero-click search.
And while Google portrays this shift as beneficial, saying AI Overviews include “more links on the page than before”, real-world data paints a different picture. A Similarweb study found that zero-click news searches have surged dramatically since the rollout of AI Overviews in May 2024, jumping from 56% to 69% in just one year.
That suggests that even if links are present, users aren’t clicking through, a worrying development for publishers who rely heavily on Google for referral traffic.
Changing the Narrative: From Quantity to “Click Quality”
Interestingly, rather than focus on the volume of traffic sent to websites, Google now appears to be moving the goalposts. Reid’s post highlights “click quality” — a metric defined by how long users stay on a page, rather than how many clicks are sent overall. According to her, users who click links inside AI responses tend to “dive deeper,” making those clicks “more valuable.”
Still, this reframing doesn’t address the growing fear among publishers: that their overall share of discoverability is shrinking, while AI tools increasingly sit between them and their audiences.
Faced with mounting publisher anxiety, Google has also started offering alternative monetization pathways. In recent months, it quietly launched tools to help publishers tap into micropayments, subscriptions, and newsletter signups — as a way to compensate for declining ad-based traffic.
But critics see this as a sign of trouble, not a solution. The timing of Google’s blog post, amid increasing reports of search traffic losses and zero-click results, reads more like a PR campaign to manage perception than a genuine refutation of what publishers are experiencing on the ground.
Some analysts believe Google is essentially asking publishers to ignore what their own analytics dashboards are telling them — and to believe in the promise of AI driving more meaningful engagement instead.
Google’s attempt to redirect blame also overlooks a deeper truth: the decline in traditional search traffic predates AI. Social platforms have already eaten into Google’s dominance, especially among younger users. TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and Amazon have been steadily pulling away search traffic for everything from restaurants to reviews to product searches.
And amid long-running complaints about declining Google Search quality — plagued by SEO spam, paywalled content, and algorithmic manipulation — users have simply started seeking answers elsewhere.
Even if Google’s claim that “billions of clicks” still flow from its search engine daily is true, the quality and distribution of that traffic have changed. AI is just the latest force accelerating a longer-term shift away from the open web and toward platform-owned experiences.
Google’s insistence that AI is not killing publisher traffic may contain a kernel of truth, but it also seems like a distraction from the uncomfortable reality that search, as we knew it, is dying — and AI is helping write its obituary.
