Google’s newly launched AI overview feature was intended to provide users with quick, simplified summaries of topics using advanced language models. However, the search giant’s latest AI implementation has sparked major frustration and anger from bloggers across the web who have seen drastic drops in organic traffic since the rollout.
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Websites Feeling the Pinch as Google’s AI Results Curb Publisher Traffic
The AI overview, which displays short, concise blurbs answering search queries at the top of results, aims to provide users with need-to-know highlights without having to click through to other pages and sources. In theory, a handy capability empowering knowledge discovery.
But many bloggers feel it’s come at the price of cannibalizing their traffic from searchers who no longer need to visit their pages.
“My website’s traffic has fallen off a cliff ever since Google enabled these AI overview things for keywords I rank for,” laments Artmall Gift Shop. “People are seeing the bite-sized summary at the top and have no reason to click through to read my posts anymore.”
Artmall provided analytics data showing her site’s organic search traffic from Google dropping nearly 40% month-over-month after the overview rollout intensified in late April.
AI Overview: Circumventing Organic Search Traffic
This issue – of Google’s own AI models circumventing and inhibiting traffic to other websites – exemplifies the risks and controversies around AI development and deployments by dominant tech giants.
For many bloggers and publishers who depend on organic search traffic not just for income but survival of their businesses, the AI overview has been received as an aggressive threat.
“I get that quick overviews can be handy sometimes, but Google has effectively appointed itself as the gatekeeper for ALL knowledge,” says a tech blogger. “Instead of sending traffic to actual sources creating information, they’ve put themselves directly in the middle to cannibalize that traffic and benefit from others’ efforts with these AI models.”
He cites his site’s own analytics showing certain mobile traffic streams decreasing by as much as 58% on queries where Google opted to display an AI-generated overview rather than sending users to actual blog coverage on the topic.
The blogosphere has become inflamed with theories that Google’s true aim is to box out publishers and become the centralized, AI-powered hub for information – maximizing user containment within its own ecosystem and properties.
While speculation around intentions, the impact and sentiment from online publishers has been overwhelmingly negative so far.
“We put in all this work into lengthy research-heavy tutorials, guides, and content pieces to enrich the web and become dependable sources of information,” says Wilson. “How can smaller creators possibly compete if Google freely summarizes everything and keeps users hostage on their properties with an AI’s gist of things?”
Wilson provided year-over-year comparison showing organic traffic to her site’s seasonal sections had plummeted 62% in early April after Google enabled AI overviews for many of those topics.
Publisher Protests, Calls for Regulation, and the AI Overview’s Future
In response to the backlash, Google has stated they are “actively monitoring publisher feedback” around the AI overview functionality. However, the search giant has unsurprisingly doubled down on its stance that the overviews represent a positive innovation empowering users with convenient access to summarized knowledge.
“We believe these AI-powered overviews providing topical summaries enhance the search experience, but we absolutely want publishers and experts to continue creating substantive content that delvers deeper expertise and nuanced understanding,” a Google spokesperson stated. “These overviews are designed to spark curiosity and easily convey high-level highlights on a topic, but not to provide comprehensive information.”
Despite pushback claiming overviews have cannibalized traffic, Google has reiterated the feature only displays for initial queries with intention of familiarizing users at a basic level. Their aim remains to then direct users to relevant websites and quality sources providing the full in-depth picture.
But with publishers and bloggers scrutinizing every fluctuation, the effects so far appear to tell a different story with publishers reporting major hits to coveted traffic streams across a spectrum of affected queries.
The frustration has boiled over into outright protests and calls for regulatory action to “rein in Google’s AI overreach.” Critics and advocacy groups argue this is a blatant instance of a tech monopoly using AI systems to unfairly privilege its own services and revenue streams over those of publishers reliant on search traffic.
Some publishers are going as far as publicly weighing lawsuits centered around allegations of deceptive practices, and antitrust claims, and even daring Google to initiate a radical step – making the AI overview functionality a paid service rather than free “content siphoning” from publishers.
For now, the battle rages on as publishers run the gamut of suppressing, accepting or adapting to a world where more knowledge seems to be flowing through the conduits of centralized corporate AI systems.
It’s an existential fight around one of the internet’s most precious resources – the flow of user attention, traffic, and control over how knowledge gets packaged and monetized.
“I worry we’re entering an AI era where only mega-corporations like Google have the resources to develop and leverage these powerful systems however they wish,” Henderson laments. “Doesn’t bode well for the open web and diversity of voices if AI sums up reality through an overly simplistic lens skewed by a few big tech overlords.”
As AI touches more aspects of how we discover, consume, and perceive information online, the debates are only beginning. Bloggers and publishers have drawn a battle line, while Google barrels ahead arguing its AI innovations enhance overall knowledge access.
It’s a crossroads between convenient utility and protecting independent authorship – the tension defining the brave new world of AI-powered information consumption.
