Sponsored by Piano • June 2, 2026 •
Michael Silberman, evp, media strategy, Piano
As consumer use of AI search accelerates, publishers are seeing precipitous traffic declines. According to Piano’s benchmark data across hundreds of publisher sites, search traffic dropped by 36%, revenue fell by 16% and the overall audience across all sources was down 9%.
When Google surfaces an AI-generated answer at the top of a search result, most people don’t click through. Organic click-through rates drop 61% on queries where an AI Overview appears. The pages hit hardest are those publishers have historically relied on for volume: weather, horoscopes and service content. Breaking news and hard-news queries are largely exempt from AI Overviews.
Most media leaders surveyed expect search traffic to fall another 43% within three years, and one-fifth expect losses above 75%.
