Data gathered by Chartbeat and shared by Axios reveals that, over the past year, Google Search traffic to publishers across the broader web have fallen drastically, and proportionally more so for smaller websites. Referral traffic from Google apparently fell by 60% for “small publishers,” while “medium publishers” (those with between 10,000-100,000 daily pageviews) saw a drop of 47%. “Large publishers,” meanwhile, saw a 22% drop. That last category would be any site getting over 100,000 daily pageviews.
It’s not just Google Search either. While Search traffic dropped by 34%, traffic from Google Discover has also fallen by 15% over the past year, the report found.
Holdup, are people not skipping the AI summaries entirely because the info is fucking shit?
You forget we are in an echo chamber here. Most people not only read the AI summaries, they believe them. Just the other day I saw a normie ask ChatGPT to add up some numbers for them, instead of using a calculator. That’s how entrenched AI has become in their day-to-day. They don’t have to think any more. Thinking is hard. And that’s how Google is able to dominate the web. Steal the data and serve it up as slop that’s good enough for the everyday Joe.