News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google's New AI Tools

'It is true, Google AI is stomping on the entire internet,' writes Slashdot reader TheWho79, sharing a report from the Wall Street Journal. 'From HuffPost to the Atlantic, publishers prepare to pivot or shut the doors.... Even highly regarded old school bullet-proof publications like Washington Post are getting hit hard.' From the report: Traffic from organic search to HuffPost's desktop and mobile websites fell by just over half in the past three years, and by nearly that much at the Washington Post, according to digital market data firm Similarweb. Business Insider cut about 21% of its staff last month, a move CEO Barbara Peng said was aimed at helping the publication 'endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control.' Organic search traffic to its websites declined by 55% between April 2022 and April 2025, according to data from Similarweb.

At a companywide meeting earlier this year, Nicholas Thompson, chief executive of the Atlantic, said the publication should assume traffic from Google would drop toward zero and the company needed to evolve its business model. 'Google is shifting from being a search engine to an answer engine,' Thompson said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. 'We have to develop new strategies.'

The rapid development of click-free answers in search 'is a serious threat to journalism that should not be underestimated,' said William Lewis, the Washington Post's publisher and chief executive. Lewis is former CEO of the Journal's publisher, Dow Jones. The Washington Post is 'moving with urgency' to connect with previously overlooked audiences and pursue new revenue sources and prepare for a 'post-search era,' he said.

At the New York Times, the share of traffic coming from organic search to the paper's desktop and mobile websites slid to 36.5% in April 2025 from almost 44% three years earlier, according to Similarweb. The Wall Street Journal's traffic from organic search was up in April compared with three years prior, Similarweb data show, though as a share of overall traffic it declined to 24% from 29%. Further reading: Google's AI Mode Is 'the Definition of Theft,' Publishers Say

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