Will Google’s AI Overviews kill news sites as we know them? : NPR

Liz Reid, head of Google’s research, is expressed during an E / S Google event in Mountain View, California, May 14, 2024. Although many factors often stimulate traffic fluctuations, publishers claim that the introduction of the GOOGLE IA previews has led to spectacular declins for the media and other sources of online information.

Jeff Chiu / Associated Press

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Jeff Chiu / Associated Press

When Google unveiled AI’s overviews last year, online publishers feared that the presentations generated by AI AI in first place search results trigger precipitated traffic reductions and prohibited the commercial model of large expanses of the web.

Now there are more and more valid evidence these fears.

New research shows that the web traffic on which publishers have long been slowing down considerably, thanks to the summaries generated by AI and the rise of AI chatbots.

Traffic to the CNN website has dropped approximately 30% compared to a year ago. Business Insider and HuffPost sites saw traffic diving around 40% during the same period, according to figures from the similar digital market company.

While many factors influence traffic fluctuations, publishers claim that the introduction of Google AI previews in May 2024 packed a punch.

Helen Havlak, the publisher of The Verge, a technological news site and the most visited home page of Vox Media, said that when people saw AI summaries, they visit the sites for more often information.

“Google traffic has decreased, and I would say that a large part of this drop has clearly aligned with the rise of IA previews,” said Havlak.

For online publishers, this is a good affair Faustian, said Klaudia Jaźwińska, Klaudia Jaźwińska from Columbia University, which is looking for the AI reverses the information industry. Traffic and money are lost when stories are transformed into IA extracts, but without Google, the situation is even more disastrous.

“The publishers are in a way in an obligation because if you want to withdraw from IA glimps, you completely withdraw from Google research,” she said.

Where does that lead?

Publishers are worried about an era when Google stops sending traffic to websites. Observers and technological publishers have nicknamed such a scenario “zero click on research, or Google Zero. It is an event that would be catastrophic for many important new and other online publishers who depend on online advertising revenues based on traffic, according to the defenders of media organizations.

“Google uses our content without compensation, offering any significant way to withdraw without disappearing entirely from the research – then turning around and using this same content to compete in us,” said Danielle Coffey, who directs the new / Media Alliance, which represents more than 2,000 points of sale. “It is parasitic, it is not durable and it represents a real existential threat for many in our industry.”

Some publishers take AI companies to justice. A dozen prosecution was brought against AI companies, in particular The New York Times“Federal copyright against Openai. Other major press organizations, such as News Corp. And Axel Springer, are license agreements with IA companies.

An example of an overview of Google AI producing a response based on the AI above the search results.

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Google said IA overviews are popular with users, leading analysts to the natural conclusion that it will likely become more widespread.

The company would not provide exact figures on the percentage of research uses IA previews, but the researchers estimate that around 20% of Google searches now include a presentation text at the top of a search page.

The publishers say that the more this percentage increases, the more the situation threatened the world already in difficulty of the online media supported by advertising.

Google, on the other hand, reports new funds from advertisements linked to AI’s overviews, which contributes to increasing its overall research profits.

How to survive? Become more like social media

For the rod, this new reality means that the double point of sale on subscriptions and pushes podcasts and newsletters and makes its website more like social media – allowing readers to follow writers and subjects. The site now offers a flow of short shapes imitating an infinite new roll to try to prevent people from leaving for Bluesky or X.

For years, Digital Media relied on search engines and social media to distribute stories. Whether it is playing Facebook algorithm or Google’s research ranking, information sites have changed the way the big titles and stories are written to maximize the scope of the platforms. The news sites, however, have been burned too many times, as when Facebook priority the news, or when Google changes its algorithm to surface fewer news sites, said the Havlak of the rod.

“An answer is that publishers must behave more like platforms themselves and play more platform games,” said Havlak.

But before they can keep people on your site, publishers must bring them there, which becomes an increasingly thorny proposal.

A recent study by Pew Research Center revealed that when people see an AI overview, they are half also likely to click on a link on Google. And after people have seen an answer to the overview of the AI, they are more likely to end their navigation sessions. Havlak sees this game.

“The event in the extinction is already there. And a bunch of small publishers have already made their doors,” said Havlak.

Specialized publications which have a constant flow of subscribers’ income is more isolated than sites that depend exclusively on traffic, such as the travel blog The planet DWho stopped after his traffic dropped by 90% after the IA preview introduction by Google.

Google said the methodology of the new PEW study is wrong. In a statement, the company said it continues to send billions of clicks to websites every day. When someone clicks on a link from an AI overview, clicks are “of better quality”, according to Google, which means that readers stay longer on the website. Havlak, for its part, says that the internal data of its site did not save this.

Website resist and adopt AI

Some software companies are trying to help online publishers to response.

Cloudflare, a computation and safety company in the cloud, pushes a “Pay-As-you-Crawl” system in which the IA robots, whether Google or that of any AI business, must first pay a website before scanning its content for the flowers of AI.

“If we want to have a web increasingly focused on AI, which, I think, is inevitable, the commercial model of the web must change, and content creators must be remunerated in a different way,” Matthew Prince, co-founder and general manager of Cloudflare, told NPR. “If the content creators cannot be offset for their content, they will stop creating content. And I think we all suffer.”

Other attempts to block the robots of AI webs have not always succeeded. So, for other publishers, the plan is not to resist but to try to use AI to stand out.

A technological startup called scrunch AI helps publishers and companies to be underlined by the realization of AI tools. “We see companies that are desperate to consume their content by AI models,” said Chris Andrew, who directs Scrunch IA.

This answer may be better suited to companies that sell a product, rather than news publishers where information is the goods.

Researcher Jaźwińska said more people gleaning AI answers, rather than clicking on links, obliges new sites to suffer or adapt. One thing should give comfort to industry, she said: AI does not replace the search for facts from human journalists.

“The content of the news is in great demand by AI companies, and that will not disappear,” she said. “Chatbots cannot report. This is something that journalists can do and robots cannot.”