How AI Search Threatens Pubs And Vendors – And What To Do About It

Overview

Search is undergoing its most profound transformation since the introduction of paid search advertising two decades ago. The rise of AI search overviews and conversational chatbots is reshaping how users interact with search engines, what kind of information they receive, and critically, how much of that traffic flows downstream to publisher websites and apps.

Traditionally, the search experience has revolved around the “ten blue links” model: users entered a query, browsed results, and clicked through to external sites for answers. Today, however, AI-driven interfaces increasingly summarize information directly. Instead of requiring users to perform their own research by navigating across multiple sources, search engines – led by Google – and chatbots now generate concise, synthesized answers.

In short, publishers are facing traffic and advertising revenue losses, and so do AdTech vendors facilitating that advertising.

The adoption of AI-powered search interfaces marks a structural change with ripple effects across search, publishing, and AdTech. This research note examines the mechanics of those changes and what stakeholders can do in response.

This research note contains:

  1. Executive Summary
  2. Introduction
  3. The Impact of AI Search Overviews and AI Chatbots on Search
  4. The Reduction of Search Traffic Forwarding
  5. Why Is There Less Traffic Forwarding from Search, But More Search Queries?
  6. Differences Between Verticals
  7. What Publishers and AdTech Vendors Can Do

Companies covered

  • Ahrefs
  • Alphabet
  • Anthropic
  • Authoritas
  • Business Insider
  • CNBC
  • CNN
  • Chegg
  • Claude
  • Cloudflare
  • Conductor
  • Daily Mail
  • Dotdash Meredith
  • Enders Analysis
  • FT Strategies
  • Financial Times
  • Google
  • HuffPost
  • MailOnline
  • Microsoft
  • OpenAI
  • Perplexity
  • Press Gazette
  • Similarweb
  • Sistrix
  • SurferSEO
  • The Atlantic
  • The Guardian
  • The New York Times
  • The Planet D
  • The Sun
  • The Telegraph
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • The Washington Post
  • Tollbit
  • World History Encyclopedia

Regions covered

United States, worldwide.

Figures and Tables

This whitepaper has 11 pages and the following figures and tables:

  • Table 1: Publisher Traffic Losses From AI
  • Figure 1: Publisher Traffic Losses From AI
  • Figure 2: Human vs. AI Bot Requests
  • Figure 3: Industry By SERPs With AI Share Change