• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, 9 hours ago

Google this week announced that AI Mode, a conversational tool, has been integrated into its traditional search engine, giving users more information about queries without attaching links traditionally offered in its search engine. But Danielle Coffey, president and chief executive of CEO of News/Media Alliance, said publishers have a major problem with this new approach.

“It deprives publishers of original content from traffic and site revenue,” Coffey told MediaPost. “Links were the last redeeming quality of search for publishers. Google can now take that content by force and use it without giving publishers anything in return.”

Coffey ran through a list of what publishers no longer receive from Google, such as traffic to websites, and data from users when they click on articles.

Publishers have been experiencing more friction since Google integrated AI, she said. Rather than a seamless integration with search when viewers subscribe to publications from search. Subscriptions are less when publishers are forced into serving in some of Google’s products like Featured Snippits and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).  

“When people do click through, Google takes up to 70% of the advertising dollars because of their related dominance in the ad-tech industry,” Coffey said.

Coffey claims Google eliminates publishers from search, if they use affiliate links, URLs that allow affiliates to track referrals and earn commissions when someone makes a purchase or completes a desired action after clicking the link. She believes this is because Google focuses more now on their own affiliate link programs, which the company has offered for years.

Search once provided publishers and news media with between 50% and 80% of referral traffic, she said, but now that has failed to between 20% to 30%. Once AI Overviews was introduced, users are less inclined to click through. Studies have shown that the presence of AI Overviews can lead to a significant drop in organic clickthrough rates, with some publishers reporting decreases of more than 50%. The decrease also has impacted CTRs for paid search ads.

Google AI Overviews in search had resulted in decreased CTRs for top-ranking pages compared with similar informational keywords without AI Overviews, according to a study from Ahrefs.

The presence of an AI Overview in search results correlated with a 34.5% lower average CTR, and the average top position of one CTR for informational keywords in March 2024 was 0.056, down to 0.031 in March 2025, according to Ahrefs.

When asked if publishers have the same issues with Microsoft Bing and its AI search services, she said no, mainly because Microsoft doesn't support the same amount of traffic as Google.