In March 2024, Morgan McBride posed for a photo shoot in her half-renovated kitchen. The image was meant to celebrate the role Google had played in the success of her DIY website, Charleston Crafted. Just a month later, she watched as her site’s traffic from Google collapsed by more than 70 percent.
McBride isn’t alone. In interviews with Bloomberg, 25 publishers and digital media professionals described a similar story. As Google integrates more artificial intelligence into its search results, many independent sites are seeing their lifelines cut off. The AI-powered summaries that now appear at the top of search results often answer questions directly, reducing the need for users to click through to the websites that originally produced the content.
For McBride, that shift has been devastating. Display ad revenue from Charleston Crafted has dropped 65 percent in the past year. She suspects Google’s AI answers are giving home renovation advice that used to bring people to her blog — sometimes offering inaccurate or even unsafe tips. “You can’t just sit around waiting for things to turn around,” she said.
For years, publishers created detailed, trustworthy content and in return received visibility and traffic from Google Search. That balance is eroding. Similarweb data shows that small to mid-sized publishers in categories like DIY, travel, cooking, and fashion have all seen significant traffic declines over the past two years.
Google denies that its AI Overviews are the cause. A company spokesperson said that traffic fluctuations can result from many factors, including seasonal changes, user preferences, and routine algorithm updates. Google says it still wants to reward content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness — or “EEAT.”
But creators argue that they’ve followed those guidelines and still been hit. “For years, Google has had the audacity to gaslight us, saying, ‘Don’t write for search,’” said Mike Hardaker, founder of Mountain Weekly News. “Well, then, who am I writing for?”
Last October, Google invited about 20 content creators to its headquarters in Mountain View, California, to address growing concerns. There, executives including search scientist Pandu Nayak acknowledged the changes and apologized. But they also admitted they couldn’t guarantee recovery for any site. Google’s search product had changed, they said, and some of the damage was irreversible.
Jake Boly, who runs the shoe review site That Fit Friend, said Google’s recent updates have favored big brands, forums like Reddit, and spammy content over small expert publishers. “If you drive away all enthusiasts and small publishers,” he said, “we’re going to be overrun by spam.”
Google says forums and videos reflect users’ evolving preferences for authentic voices. But some creators argue that in trying to clean up low-quality, AI-generated spam, Google is also burying high-quality, niche content.
Laura Longwell of Travel Addicts pointed to examples of nonsensical search results. “Right now, Google is suggesting that some of the best advice about where to go to the beach near Philadelphia comes from a luggage storage company and a driving school,” she said.
Another worry for publishers is that AI Overviews show users a summary of their content without giving them a reason to click through. That means users see the content, but sites don’t get credit for it in the form of traffic or revenue. Gisele Navarro of the review site HouseFresh said internal analytics show more impressions from AI Overviews, but fewer actual visits. “Sites don’t make money unless users click through,” she said.
Raptive, a digital media company that supports over 5,000 creators, estimates its clients could lose up to 25 percent of their traffic to AI Overviews. Google has claimed the feature drives more traffic to a “diverse mix” of publishers, but has not released data to support that.
In some cases, the damage is too great to undo. Travel bloggers Dave Bouskill and Debra Corbeil built The Planet D into a leading site, with Google delivering 90 percent of their audience. When AI Overviews launched, their traffic was cut in half. Then it dropped by 90 percent. They stopped updating their blog earlier this year. “I do feel betrayed by Google,” Bouskill said. Corbeil added, “Betrayed, that’s the word.”
Some publishers have turned to other platforms. The Planet D team is now focused on YouTube, which is also owned by Google. Others are searching for new distribution strategies or banding together to negotiate better terms with big tech companies.
Still, questions remain about whether Google’s AI-driven future can coexist with the ecosystem of independent publishers that helped build the web. Danielle Coffey, president of the News Media Alliance, summed up the sentiment among many creators. “Why are they unilaterally deciding what is a high-quality click,” she said, “when we’re the ones creating the content?”