Many believe generative artificial intelligence engines and large language models are a problem for the open web, publishers and even advertisers. Some think they are a problem for Google
because they’ll have less search traffic to monetize, replaced by Gemini LLM conversations.
Both of these notions are wrong.
In just a single year since launch, Gen AI search and LLMs have changed the face of the open web. This rapid change is impacting both search engines and publishers. We’re seeing a decline in traditional search traffic, with some publishers experiencing more significant drops than others. This trend directly affects Google, which is seeing fewer search queries and also impacts publishers who are receiving less referral traffic from search engines. The competition for this shrinking pool of traffic is heating up, with companies like OpenAI and Perplexity vying for a share — and Google actively competing with itself by offering a generative AI product called Gemini.
Whether OpenAI and ChatGPT “kill” Google search or Google itself does it, there’s no doubt–search traffic to publishers is going down. The question is what do publishers do if search traffic drops 20%, 30% or even 50%?
