• by Laurie Sullivan , September 30, 2026

Google is exploring giving publishers a new revenue stream. The company is running a pilot program, paying roughly 100 publishers for content based on how much it contributes to AI-powered answers and other products.

The company hinted at the move when Markham Erikson, vice president of government affairs and public policy at Google, wrote in a June blog post the company is "exploring new types of partnership and value-exchange models that can further improve our products and deepen our relationships across the ecosystem."

Now, in an early-stage learning pilot that incentivizes the creation of high-quality content, Google is experimenting with investing in new ways to help publishers build audiences and strengthen the thousands of partnerships they and the Alphabet company has across the web.

AI-powered summaries, AI Overviews, and other similar search products have dramatically reduced the amount of search traffic to websites, prompting publishers to find other ways to compensate for the loss of traffic.

Google says through Search it continues to send billions of clicks daily to the web, and its  AI Search features alone sends billions of clicks to the web every week.

Nina Gould, chief innovation officer at Forbes, told MediaPost in August that many in digital publishing have come to terms with search delivering fewer referrals to websites, but alluded to possible changes that could create a new revenue stream.

“When you chop off that funnel and the firehose, that first click from Google, it takes a lot of the audience, but leaves you with those who are loyal,” she said.

Tinuiti, an independent ad agency, published data in August showing the 100 most-cited ecommerce sites accounted for 12% of AI citations in July, down from 14% in Q2 2026. The decline was driven primarily by weaker ecommerce visibility on ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.

Amazon accounted for 14% of Microsoft Copilot citations in July, but just 0.1% on ChatGPT and zero on Gemini, and Reddit's influence retreated sharply on some platforms.

On Perplexity, Reddit fell from 20% of citations in the first quarter of 2026 to just 2% in July, helping push Perplexity's overall social citation share from 26% to 10%.

Tinuiti also observed a sharp decline in Reddit citations on ChatGPT beginning Aug. 14.

Google increasingly leans on its own ecosystem. YouTube gained citation share across AI Mode, AI Overviews and Gemini, while google.com reached 4% of AI Mode citations in July, up from effectively zero in late 2025, according to Tinuiti data.

Google started testing the program with AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini chatbot less than a year ago, reported The Information, citing a person close to Google.

Payments have varied. One publisher that joined a few months ago has earned about $50,000 to $60,000, the publisher told The Information.

Another that joined early on has earned more than $1 million a year, which represents a bigger percentage of its revenue. Smaller sites have earned less than $1,000 over several months, according to the report.

Google has other similar programs outside of this pilot, as it continues to expand its partnerships through a news AI pilot program, which now includes more than 200 publications globally.

And through a licensing and news experience program Google News Showcase, the company has agreements with more than 2,800 publications in 33 countries. All are tailored partnerships to ensure that Google delivers mutual value for both its products and the publishers it works with.