Publishers report ‘negligible’ traffic impact of Google AI Overviews

Two large publishers – Dotdash Meredith and Ziff Davis – say Google AI Overviews haven’t significantly impacted their traffic.

What Dotdash Meredith is saying. Here’s what the IAC (owner of Dotash) wrote its Q2 2024 shareholder letter:

• “Google began to roll out AI Overviews in mid-May, the impact on our traffic has been negligible. Referrals from Google search queries produce less than half of our traffic, and based on our analysis, AI-generated answers are being served on roughly 15% of searches across our categories, with the highest frequency in Health, Technology, and Finance. Click-through rate differentials between pages with and without AI Overviews are minor so far, but it is still early and products change quickly, so the past isn’t prologue.”

What Ziff Davis is saying. Here’s what Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah said on the company’s earnings call:

• “I know there continues to be investor interest in the impacts of AI on search. …Now that the AI Overview experience is in full circulation, we wanted to revisit the analysis we did in Q3 of 2023 relating to the frequency of AI overviews being presented to users.
• “We analyzed thousands of queries across our key domains that generate the lion’s share of our organic search referrals and the percentage of times that an AI Overview appeared. It fell to 8%, meaning 92% of the time the search engine results page did not include an AI Overview for the queries that matter to us most. Analysis by other industry experts indicate a similar percentage of overall searches resulting in AI Overviews.
• “At this point, we don’t see it as a significant change to the search experience.”

But. While this all makes sense, it’s important to remember that the rollout of Google AI Overviews has been fairly limited and volatile so far. Overall, AI Overviews appeared for 7% of queries, as of the end of July, according to BrightEdge research. The presence of AI Overviews peaked at 15% in May.

While Ziff Davis may not see AI Overviews as a “significant change” to Google’s search experience, I would add the word “yet” to the end of that sentence. Because Google has clearly stated search is evolving toward AI Overviews.

Why we care. Generative AI has just begun reshaping search and AI will continue to do so over the next decade. Granted, these two reports form a line, not a trend. But AI Overviews (and Search Generative Experience before it) caused a lot of anxiety for SEOs, publishers and content creators. So it’s helpful to get some insight into how publishers are being impacted in these early days of AI Overviews.