Up until a few days ago, if you had asked Google to create a walkable itinerary for you and your friends in Melbourne this weekend, complete with cafe stops, galleries and street art – you would be greeted with a series of links, each taking you to different gallery websites, cafe pages and, if you are lucky, a few walking itineraries shared by fellow travellers. But on Wednesday, that all changed.
With the introduction of Google’s AI Mode in Australia, that question will now deliver a detailed plan with clickable links, restaurant suggestions and a map. No typing, no multiple searches. Just one intelligent, conversational answer.
Google’s advanced Gemini models power the feature that allows users to ask longer, more complex, and multimodal questions, by voice, text or even image, and receive comprehensive AI-generated responses woven directly into Search. AI Mode, Google said, represents the tech giant’s most sophisticated evolution of search yet, capable of breaking down complex queries into multiple sub-questions and sourcing answers from across the web in seconds.
For users, it’s the future of effortless information. But for publishers and advertisers, it’s another nail in the coffin of traditional Google Search, leading us toward a future where clicks are a thing of history.
RIP Traditional Search
When Google’s AI Overviews launched in 2024, publishers feared their articles would be scraped and summarised into neatly packaged AI answers that removed the need to click through. A year later, those fears have largely come true.
Independent research has found that nearly 69 per cent of news-related searches now end in zero clicks, up sharply from 56 per cent a year earlier. For major outlets like The New York Times, organic search traffic has dropped nearly 8 per cent over three years, while AI-driven referral traffic has surged. Meanwhile, AI referrals from tools like ChatGPT have skyrocketed, growing 25-fold from under 1 million in early 2024 to more than 25 million in 2025.
Still, these gains are not enough to offset the broader decline. Some publishers like Reuters, NY Post, and Business Insider are seeing notable growth in ChatGPT traffic, while The New York Times has only seen modest increases.
For smaller publishers reliant on advertising or affiliate revenue, the decline is even more brutal. As users get the information they need without ever leaving Google’s ecosystem, ad impressions will surely fall, subscriptions will likely stall, and audiences will eventually shrink.
Google Says The Numbers Are Misunderstood, So Why Aren’t Publishers Buying It?
Despite mounting evidence, Google has reported that it “continues to send billions of clicks to the web every day” and is “committed to prioritising the web in our AI experiences in Search”.
In a blog post in August, Liz Reid, VP, head of Google Search at Google, said: “Overall, total organic click volume from Google Search to websites has been relatively stable year-over-year”.
Not only that, but Reid argued that the “quality” of clicks is increasing, referring to users spending more time on clicked sites and not bouncing back to the search results immediately. “We’re actually sending slightly more quality clicks to websites than a year ago,” she wrote.
“This data is in contrast to third-party reports that inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in aggregate traffic — often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the rollout of AI features in Search”.
According to Reid, AI Overviews are enabling people to ask longer and more complex questions and, in doing so, are increasing search activity overall. With more searches, she argues, come more opportunities for websites to appear and get clicked.
“For some questions where people are looking for a quick answer, like “when is the next full moon,” people may be satisfied with the initial response and not click further. This has also been true for other answer features we’ve added, like the Knowledge Graph or sports scores. But for many other types of questions, people continue to click through, as they want to dig deeper into a topic, explore further or make a purchase. This is why we see click quality increasing. An AI response might provide the lay of the land, but people click to dive deeper and learn more, and when they do, these clicks are more valuable,” Reid wrote.
Reid also suggested that changes in traffic patterns may have less to do with Google and more to do with user preferences. “People are increasingly seeking out and clicking on sites with forums, videos, podcasts, and posts where they can hear authentic voices and first-hand perspectives,” she wrote. “Websites that meet these evolving user needs are benefiting from this shift and are generally seeing an increase in traffic.”
She stopped short of naming which sites those are.
Despite publishers’ growing concerns, Reid positioned Google as a steward of the open web. “As a search company, we care passionately, perhaps more than any other company, about the health of the web ecosystem,” she said. “We continue to send billions of clicks to websites every day and believe that Search’s value exchange with the web remains strong.”
She added that Google’s AI-generated answers include “prominent links, visible citation of sources, and in-line attribution” that help users learn where information is coming from. “Websites always have control over how content is highlighted or included in Search with open web protocols, which we respect and follow.”
With the web having existed for more than three decades, Read said that Google firmly believes it is “entering its most exciting era yet”.
“Technology shifts bring change, but they also bring extraordinary opportunity. We believe that AI will be one of the most expansionary moments for the web, empowering us all to ask vastly more questions and creators to reach more deeply engaged audiences. We’ll continue to help businesses, creators, and websites seize these opportunities as we build this future together”.
But for news publishers, that optimism feels disconnected from reality and Google’s reassurances about “quality clicks” ring hollow when the numbers say otherwise.
The New Reality For Advertisers
For brands and advertisers, Google’s pivot to AI-powered answers also raises uncomfortable questions. If AI Mode summarises multiple sources into a single response, where do ads fit in?
Google says AI Mode still drives new opportunities for content to be discovered, but ad buyers are watching closely. The fewer the clicks, the fewer the impressions, and the more power shifts to Google’s own ad ecosystem.
The overall decline in traffic to independent publishers could concentrate advertising opportunities within Google’s own properties, from YouTube to Shopping, leaving advertisers to battle it out against a high volume of competitors and publishers struggling to make ends meet without the ad dollars they rely on to operate.
According to Ori Gold, CEO and co-founder at Bench Media, “Google’s AI Mode will reshape how the internet works in Australia. It is more than a search update and could quietly rewrite the web’s entire traffic economy”.
Early data, he said, suggests that up to 90 per cent of AI Mode sessions end without a single click-through, compared to around 40 per cent under traditional search.
“The world’s biggest advertising engine, which commands roughly 94 per cent of Australia’s search market and drives around half to two-thirds of all traffic to local publishers through paid and organic search, is learning how to answer questions without sending users anywhere”.
That, he claimed, should “send shivers through two camps. Brand advertisers who rely on search as their main performance media source, and publishers who rely on traffic”.
“From a brand perspective, this is a shift from ranking first to being part of the AI’s reasoning. Most marketers are not ready for that world. Bench Media’s Consumer AI Sentiment report found that while most three out of four Australians use AI to inform purchases, many find it impersonal. They trust brands that use AI to enhance creativity and human connection. Authenticity is now the real performance metric. Brands that sound authentic and are culturally aware will build trust. Those who don’t will feel synthetic,” he said.
“On the performance side, budgets will start to move. Expect non-brand paid search spend to drop between 10 and 25 percent as AI answers replace generic queries. But conversion rates for the surviving clicks will rise. Marketers in the United States are reporting up to 20 times higher conversion efficiency because AI-informed users arrive pre-qualified. Media buyers will focus on quality over quantity, shifting investment to video, social and creator partnerships where intent and context still belong to the brand, not the algorithm”.
Gold said the for local publishers, the outlook is even tougher. “Traffic from informational searches could fall between 10 and 40 per cent, especially for lifestyle and news sites. The survival strategy is not about scale. It is about sourceability. Content needs to be rich in schema, provenance and originality to earn citation inside AI summaries. The new metric is not CTR. It is how often your site teaches the machine. Publishers that create unique, authentic and valuable content will shine”.
“AI Mode is a reminder that the internet’s most valuable real estate is shifting from pages to predictions. Those who treat this as another algorithm update will miss it. Those who treat it as an economic one might just adapt in time”.
Publishers Fight Back
Last month, Penske Media Corporation (PMC), the parent company of Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety in the United States, became the first major publisher to sue Google over its AI-generated summaries. The lawsuit accuses Google of siphoning revenue, clicks and ad dollars through “AI Overviews” that repurpose journalism without consent.
Penske claims about 20% of Google searches linking to its sites now display AI Overviews, a figure it expects to rise. The company alleges its affiliate revenue has already seen a significant his from its peak by the end of 2024 as search traffic declined.
The lawsuit paints a catch-22 for publishers. If Penske blocks Google from indexing its articles, it effectively disappears from search results. If it doesn’t, it continues to “add fuel to a fire that threatens PMC’s entire publishing business,” according to the complaint, cited by the Wall Street Journal.
Google insists AI Overviews improve search, not undermine it. “With AI Overviews, people find Search more helpful and use it more, creating new opportunities for content to be discovered. We will defend against these meritless claims,” said Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda.
Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, which represents over 2,200 publishers, called Google’s dominance “the definition of theft.”
“All of the elements being negotiated with every other AI company doesn’t apply to Google because they have the market power to not engage in those healthy practices,” Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, said. “When you have the massive scale and market power that Google has, you are not obligated to abide by the same norms. That is the problem.”
Other media giants are already involved in litigation. The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and New York Daily News are involved in legal discussions with OpenAI and Microsoft. News Corp, meanwhile, has sued AI search engine Perplexity, with CEO Robert Thomson branding its behaviour “an abuse of intellectual property that harms journalists, writers, publishers.”
Just this week, News Corp executive chairman Michael Miller warned that the Australian media industry is “buckling under the weight of the four seismic waves of disruption” as artificial intelligence and social media giants threaten to unleash what he calls “a new Big Steal.”
Speaking at the Melbourne Press Club, Miller said that “AI will create a new digital universe,” but cautioned that this moment “provides the opportunity to learn the lessons of the past and design a new relationship between technology and society that works in ethical and equitable ways”.
Picture: NewsWire / David Geraghty
“We lived through the first wave of the information revolution with a sense at first … of wonderment and then horror and frustration,” he said. “And now, as we stand at the dawn of this new technological age. We can’t afford to repeat past mistakes.”
While Miller acknowledges that “without doubt AI offers extraordinary possibilities to journalism,” he warned that it at the same time, “could destroy our industry if it is allowed to hoover up our work and deliver to vast audiences with no attribution and no payment.”
Calling the situation “a subject that risks becoming a crisis,” he said: “In my fight for a successful future for professional journalism, I am not asking for handouts. I am calling on the Federal Government to ensure a level playing field for all. Because journalism is vital to our communities.”
Miller pointed to the scale of recent industry decline, citing evidence that “161 news outlets closed their doors in the five years to March last year. That’s three times more closures than in the decade to 2018. I would describe every one of those closures as devastating. Not only at an industry level but at a community level. Because that’s thousands of local stories no longer being told. Dozens of local councils no longer being held to account. Reduced celebrations of local achievements and culture.”
Miller argued that while the government has “tried”, its current efforts are “at times ineffective when it comes to supporting Australian media”.
He said three urgent measures were needed to support the survival of journalism.
“Firstly, and most importantly, small news publishers have yet to receive any of the promised support from the News Media Assistance Program, also known as NewsMAP. The government needs to deliver on its commitment after announcing this in December last year. There is no reason to hold this back.”
“Secondly, the government must enact now the News Media Bargaining Incentive, which has not advanced, and remains unimplemented just under a year after being announced.”
“Thirdly, a Social License should be implemented, that would be a package of laws and requirements that the tech companies would need to meet, if they want access to Australian consumers.”
For publishers, the question is existential. Do they continue to feed the AI systems eroding their traffic, or risk cutting themselves off from the world’s dominant search engine?
As Penske put it: “We have a responsibility to proactively fight for the future of digital media and preserve its integrity – all of which is threatened by Google’s current actions”.
For two decades, Google Search was the great equaliser: a place where good SEO could put a small publisher next to the biggest media brand in the world. AI Mode, while technically still a search tool, is increasingly functioning as an answer engine, one that reasons, summarises and personalises.
The result? The internet’s architecture of discovery, built on blue links, organic reach and advertising revenue, could be quietly rewritten by AI. And for those who rely on Google to survive, the question now isn’t whether AI Mode will change search. It’s whether it will end it.
