AI Overviews and AI Mode put summaries above links and weaken the traffic deal publishers relied on.
Google has changed the search deal that online publishers relied on for years. The company rolled out AI Overviews in 2024, placing AI-generated summaries above links to sources. In May 2025, Google launched AI Mode, a chatbot-like interface that returns detailed summaries from web results. Publishers now compete with those summaries for attention and clicks.
Publishers optimized pages for Google Search and filled Google’s index while Google supplied exposure and traffic. The News/Media Alliance warned that AI Overviews would prove catastrophic for traffic. A Press Gazette investigation found AI Overviews appeared for almost a quarter of news-related searches in May 2024. By August, the feature had begun replacing media sites that held top spots for certain queries.
Builders and operators can no longer treat Google as a predictable referral channel. AI summaries can answer queries before a user reaches a publisher, and Google controls which sources appear beneath the summary. Teams that depend on search traffic need to measure click loss, diversify distribution, and track how often AI results surface for their core queries.
Google continues to build an AI-powered search experience, so publishers and operators should watch referral trends across Search, AI Overviews, and AI Mode. The key signal is whether Google sends fewer outbound clicks as AI Mode covers more queries. Teams that track these shifts can adjust content and channel strategy before traffic losses compound.
What matters
- Google rolled out AI Overviews in 2024 and AI Mode in May 2025 to summarize search results.
- Publishers and operators lose guaranteed clicks when AI summaries answer queries directly.
- Watch whether Google sends fewer outbound clicks as AI Mode expands to more searches.
Why it matters
Watch whether Google sends fewer outbound clicks as AI Mode expands to more searches.
This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by The Verge. Source reference: https://www.theverge.com/column/1017983/google-ai-search-online-publishing.
Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.