Press Gazzette. “Google’s search traffic to publishers declined globally by a third in the year to November, according to new Chartbeat data. In addition, referrals to more than 2,500 publisher websites from Google Discover, a feed served to users on Google’s native mobile apps and within its Android operating system, were down 21% year on year. The new Chartbeat data was published in the Journalism and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026 report published by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Since May 2023, Google search referrals were down 21% globally, with Google Discover down 18% and all external referrals down 24%.”

See also International News Media Association (INMA) – Search disruption: Don’t panic, estimate the risk, plan your response. Google’s shift toward AI Overviews and AI Mode has triggered a wave of anxiety among news publishers. The instinctive response is panic. The more useful response is analysis. The first step is to size the risk. Search has long been a critical distribution channel for news, but its role is often misunderstood…”