Google’s AI-powered search results cause a significant decline in website traffic, according to a New York Times report. Cloudflare data indicates human-driven traffic to businesses fell by nearly 40% between June 2025 and April 2026. Google’s AI Overviews drive this decrease by providing direct answers on search pages, which reduces user click-through rates.
The trend threatens the economic viability of the open web and advertising-dependent publishers. Critics argue Google keeps users within its own ecosystem by scraping external data without sending referral traffic back to creators. This shift disrupts the historical relationship between the search giant and the websites that provide its content.