Traffic referrals have dropped for some sites, but generative AI's impact is uneven

Google hesitated to dive into generative search until pushed by OpenAI, Microsoft, and a raft of smaller companies, such as Perplexity with their AI-powered search tools. That hesitation is gone. Google AI Overviews (AIO) has been broadly released in 100 countries and appeared in 33% of keywords in November 2024, according to SEO platform BrightEdge. And despite the influx of new AI-first competitors, Google’s share of search remains undiminished.

OpenAI’s SearchGPT is growing fast and has sent four times the referral traffic as Perplexity in October 2024, according to BrightEdge. But it still remains tiny next to Google’s referral traffic. A longer-term threat to Google could be Meta AI search, but details on Meta’s plans remain vague.

Large publishers, such as Ziff Davis and DotDash Meredith, insisted in August that AIO’s impact on search referral traffic had been minimal. But AIO has clearly wrought some changes, and the pace of change has likely accelerated since it was more widely released.

Eric Hochberger, co-founder and CEO of Mediavine, a programmatic ad tech provider for independent publishers, reported that a lot of the publishers his company worked with had seen a decrease in traffic provided by Google.

AIO search results sit above the traditional answer list, with citations within the text linking to a URL. For searches in categories where subject area expertise is valued—such as healthcare, education, and B2B technology—Google has added AIO to most result pages. In May, only healthcare-related search had AIO in the majority of results.

Even when an AIO result includes a link, a May report by the Growth Memo found that it produced 8.9% fewer clicks. So, the traffic impact from AIO is likely larger than the shift in citations would suggest.

The long tail of sites will likely see more reductions in referrals unless they have unique specialized information. In March, Raptive, a site managing creator platforms, said it had projected that overall search referral traffic could drop 20% to 60% as a result of AIO.

Read the full report, Generative AI for Media Sellers.