News companies are warned of “devastating impact” on online audiences as search results are replaced by AI summaries.
The threat posed by Google's AI overview uses blocks of text to summarise search results, and is rapidly rising to the top of concern among media owners. Some view it as an existential threat to outlets that rely on traffic in search results.
AI Summary can provide all the information users want without having to click on the original source of content. Meanwhile, search result links are pushed further down the page, reducing the number of users they find.
A new analysis by the Authoritas Analytics Company found that sites that were previously initially ranked in search results could lose about 79% of the traffic for that query if the results were delivered under the AI summary.
The study found that links to YouTube, owned by Google's parent company Alphabet, are more pronounced compared to the usual search results system. The investigation is filed as part of a legal complaint against the UK's competition watchdog regarding the impact of Google AI overview.
A Google spokesman said in a statement that the study was “based on inaccurate and flawed assumptions and analysis,” using a set of searches that do not represent all queries that generate outdated estimates and news website traffic.
“People are drawn to AI-powered experiences, and AI feature search allows people to ask more questions and create new opportunities for them to discover their website,” the spokesman said. “We continue to send billions of clicks to our website every day, but we don't see a dramatic drop in overall web traffic, as suggested.”
The second survey also showed a massive hit to referral traffic from Google AI overview. A month-long survey of approximately 69,000 Google searches run by the US Think tank Pew Research Center found that users clicked a link under the AI summary every 100 times.
A Google spokesperson said the study also used “a distorted queryset that does not represent flawed methodologies and search traffic.”
Senior News executives say Google has repeatedly refused to share the data needed to calculate the impact of using AI summaries.
The AI overview only constitutes slices of Google search, but UK publishers say they already feel it is effective. MailOnline executive Carly Stephen said clicks have dropped significantly from search results featuring AI summary in May, with click-through rates dropping by 56.1% on desktop sites and 48.2% on mobile.
Legal complaints to the UK's Competition and Markets Bureau are collaborations with the technical justice group FoxGlove, the Independent Publishers Alliance, and the Open Web movement.
Owen Meredith, CEO of News Media Association, accused Google of “keeping users in their own walled yards and trying to monetize them by incorporating valuable content, including news created by the intense work of others.
“The current situation is completely unsustainable and ultimately quality information will die online,” he said. “Competition and market authority have a toolkit to tackle these issues, and that has to be done urgently.”
FoxGlove Director Rosa Curling said the new research demonstrated “the devastating impact Google's 'AI Overview' already has in the UK's independent news industry.”
“If Google simply steals the journalist's job and gives it to you as its own, that would be bad enough,” she said. “But what's worse, they use this work to promote their own tools and benefits, but make it even more difficult for the media to reach readers they rely on to maintain their work.”
