‘Search isn’t dead, it’s fragmenting’: How to manage Google traffic decline
Talk of “Google zero” has been overplayed, according to audience growth experts at leading UK publishers who say the right content can still do well on search.
Daily Mail director of SEO and editorial e-commerce Carly Steven said the traffic impact of Google rolling out AI Overviews has actually not been that severe overall.
“Our own findings are consistent with broader studies: when an AI Overview appears, clickthrough rates drop sharply,” she said.
“But the frequency of AIOs hasn’t increased in the way many expected. Across the keywords we track, AIO visibility has actually plateaued – around 12% of non‑brand terms on mobile in the UK and 19% in the US, slightly higher on desktop. That’s down from what we saw in mid‑2024.
“Crucially, most of our search traffic comes from branded enquiries, and more than half our users visit directly, so the overall impact on our total traffic remains small.” Branded enquiries refer to searches that feature the brand name, for example “Mail Meghan Markle”.
Steven said celebrity and showbiz queries are most likely to trigger AI Overviews for the Daily Mail, giving the example of searches like “Ed Sheeran wife”, “Maya Jama boyfriend” and “celebrity net worth”.
She said these were “historically strong, evergreen opportunities for publishers. Oddly, product‑recall queries also seem to trigger AIOs.” Breaking news “still rarely triggers” AI summaries, she said.
In January Press Gazette reported new Chartbeat data, first published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which said Google search traffic to publishers had declined globally by a third in the year to November.
The decline was higher in the US (down 38%) than in Europe (down 17%).
Steven, however, noted that zero-click behaviour “didn’t start with AI: Google’s results pages have been crowded for years with features like featured snippets, forums, and knowledge panels, alongside increasingly fragmented user journeys starting on platforms like Reddit or Tiktok”.
At the Daily Mail, she said, “continued investment in distinctive, high‑quality journalism is the best defence against algorithmic change.
“Search isn’t dead. It is fragmenting; queries can start beyond a traditional search engine, and platforms increasingly influence each other. This demands different thinking on optimisation and more nuanced KPIs. Google’s systems are increasingly focused on rewarding genuine quality content… I think this has to be the main focus – create content that truly satisfies users, and the algorithms generally follow.”
Bauer sees ‘uneven impact’ on clickthroughs from AI Overviews
New data from Similarweb published by growth agency Graphite shows organic traffic from Google to the top 40,000 websites (not just publishers) in the US was down 2.5% in 2025 compared to the previous year. The same dataset showed the “newspapers” category was down 11% year on year but “world news and media” was up 4%.
It found AI Overviews reduce clickthrough rates by around 35% but only appear around 30% of the time.
Stuart Forrest, Bauer Media Group’s global SEO director for publishers, told Press Gazette the appearance of AI Overviews in around 30% of searches “broadly tracks with our experience” but that they appear more in certain content types and sectors.
Forrest agreed with Steven that there has been “some flattening” in the growth in frequency of AI Overviews appearing. “We appear to have reached some level of normality, which I think is encouraging because then you start to work out where you are as far as the impact,” he said.
Service journalism “where facts are less debatable and expert opinion is less important” typically sees a higher loss of traffic from AI Overviews, Forrest said.
Bauer, which publishes several motoring magazine brands including Car, Classic Cars and Parkers, has seen car specifications data hit hard.
“We publish specifications data across tens of thousands of different makes and models and derivatives and that’s going to tell you how many litres of boot space does a Skoda Kodiaq have,” Forrest said. “Well, that fact is not in dispute. That data is not proprietary to Parkers. We buy it in from any number of the third parties that have this.
“And I suppose if you’re specifically coming to the web to answer that question, that’s information journalism. I wouldn’t expect a user to go through an unnecessary click to get that data. So that’s a good example of where AIO deals with that query quite well and it tells you the fact. It doesn’t actually always do it by an AIO. Some of those content types were suffering from zero click before AI Overviews.
“But we also see examples of where AI Overviews is present against a query and it doesn’t have a meaningful impact on clickthrough rate. Now, I don’t really think I know exactly why. We’re trying to understand that at the moment.”
TV listings information rarely sees AI Overviews appear against key queries, Forrest said, likely because “the data is so close to real time that Google really struggles to synthesise it meaningfully into an AI Overview”.
Some other TV-related searches, such as “best Netflix box set”, often generate a cards-based recommendation feature on Google rather than AI Overview which Forrest said “can have an impact” but “doesn’t kill clickthrough altogether”.
Forrest suggested people might be “more likely to continue to click through to a trusted source to satisfy yourself that it is right” when the information is of “real consequence” to them.
“And then I also think there’s clear evidence that where the information isn’t necessarily a clear single answer, and there’s some debate and discussion, then we continue to enjoy a pretty good clickthrough rate.”
Forrest noted that it is hard for publishers to tell whether a click has come from an AI Overview where it is present, or whether it is coming from the organic result underneath, as Google Search Console does not separate this information. The CMA said last week Google should provide “clear and detailed metrics” to publishers when their content is used in AI Overviews and separate tab AI Mode.
Overall, Forrest said, Bauer has seen a decline in organic search traffic “but it’s absolutely not the sort of double digit fall that the [Reuters] study showed. It’s single digit decline year over year.”
More than 60% of Bauer’s website traffic comes from organic search.
Some brands are down but others such as sites for golf, outdoor leisure and women’s lifestyle are up, meaning it is not the same impact across the board.
Forrest said thinking about “obvious” audience techniques has helped: “We’re spending a lot of time thinking about content packaging – and that’s not just organic search, that’s for all discovery surfaces, where we’re just putting a lot of effort into how is that content actually appearing in front of the user? Is the headline appealing? Is the description enticing?
“Because the visibility is one thing, but actually making sure that you are succeeding in winning the click is obviously really, really important. It sounds obvious, but it’s been amazing to really focus squarely on that and that’s had quite a meaningful impact on on turning visibility into actual traffic.”
He added that the decline in search has been offset by growth in traffic from Google Discover(the tech giant’s default mobile feed) although he noted it is “known for not being particularly predictable or easy to manage”. Bauer has also seen growth in Facebook and email referral traffic.
Forrest advised other publishers “not to waste effort” and be “quite unemotional about the types of content where we’ve seen the decline and we’re probably not going to see the recovery”.
For example, rather than car specification data, focusing on expert recommendations about which car to buy. Forrest noted Google can still summarise this content “but we’re finding that people don’t see that as necessarily being enough. It’s a high consequence purchasing decision.”
He added that people who “derive pleasure” from a pursuit, for example people who read Car magazine, are “still quite happy to come and consume the content from people who they trust and know and enjoy”. At Bauer this contrasts to Parkers, which Forrest said is more likely to be read by people who find choosing their car a “pain” and therefore might not want to click through and spend as much time with the content.
Most publishers who responded to a Reuters Institute survey said they expected to put less effort into traditional Google search in 2026 (a net score of -25 when asked whether they would put more or less in).
But SEO expert for news publishers Barry Adams posted on Linkedin in response that “yes, the decline is real. It’s gotten much harder to earn clicks from Google. No question about that.
“But when you’re running a marathon, and the pace increases, do you slow down? Do you just let yourself be overtaken? Surefire way to make it to the finish line dead last.
“I understand the sentiments underlying these decisions, but it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Put less effort in, and you’ll get less traffic out of it. And down and down the spiral goes.”
Forrest compared the idea of Google Zero with “the supposed death of print… Do I think Google will universally go to zero? No, I do not. Do I think that there are content categories that will go largely towards zero? Yes.
“So I think for publishers, organic search as a channel, undoubtedly, is out of the growth era… Organic search, for me, becomes a sort of late life cycle channel that has to be managed with efficiencies and clarity and focus on all the right areas and not wasting resources on the wrong areas. That has a lot in common for me with managing print businesses that are in long-term structural decline, but that decline has typically been slower than most forecasts.”
Forrest also warned: “There’s a risk that people just take their eye off organic search and potentially end up accelerating the decline rather than managing quite nicely a long-term structural decline, particularly where you’ve got strong brands, like many quality publishers have.”
Telegraph ‘not felt’ AI Overviews impact too strongly
The Telegraph’s SEO director Harry Clarkson-Bennett similarly described Google traffic as being in “managed decline”. He said: “I suppose we’re thinking this isn’t ever going to drive what it did, but it’s probably still going to be our most important channel.
“So we really need to still pay attention to it and probably invest our expertise and skills more wisely in terms of sections that are going to prove more valuable to our user and continue to provide value for us.”
Clarkson-Bennett said AI Overviews have steadily risen in frequency for The Telegraph’s top search keywords – for example alongside health and fitness content – but the brand has “not felt them hugely” and news has been “relatively safe”.
Clarkson-Bennett said that “broadly” subscription publishers are safer because their audience are less likely to be satisfied with a summary. He added: “I don’t think it’s a bad thing” if publishers have to reconsider what type of content they are providing and how to spend their resources.
Overall he said The Telegraph has been “largely unaffected” by recent Google core algorithm updates, with the exception of the site reputation abuse update that hit its betting and voucher code sections hard in 2024, and Discover traffic has been healthy.
However the last update in December was “pretty poor” for The Telegraph as it was for many major publishers, hitting evergreen and affiliate content in particular.
He added that “overall I think the market has been a bit too pessimistic” about Google but that he has recently become “a little bit more pessimistic” following the December core update.
AI Overviews are ‘further deterioration’ in publishers’ relationship with Google
Chris Dicker, chief executive of specialist publisher Candr Media Group and board member for the Independent Publisher Alliance, told Press Gazette he believes Google traffic declines are as bad as the data shows “and potentially worse in some cases and not so bad in others”.
He said opinion-based content “tends to be less affected” while evergreen content such as explainers and ‘how to’ articles “is just being all eaten up”.
Dicker believes even some news content is “being completely gobbled up” if it is fact-based information that the AI Overviews can summarise.
And he said: “With zero click increasing year after year after year, AI Overviews is just another dagger in the side,” adding that it is a “further deterioration” in publishers’ relationships with Google.
He recalled the launch of featured snippets in Google search results which badly affected publishers who had curated websites around, for example, celebrity heights and ages. “There were a couple of publishers that disappeared overnight… I’m not saying that AI Overviews has killed publishers overnight as such, but it definitely had a severe impact on certain types of publishers without a shadow of a doubt.”
Candr, which publishes brands like Trusted Reviews, The Ambient (about smart home technologies), Recombu (which provides ‘best’ lists for tech products) and Get Sweat Go (about outdoor fitness equipment), has cut staff in the past year “since AI Overviews hit us”, Dicker said.
“We’ve had to look at what content we’re willing to invest in and what we’re not, and does the revenue model support the content that we’re producing,” he said.
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