The replacement of traditional search with language model “answers” shifts the internet from a link-based content ecosystem to a world where traffic is less critical than relevance and authority.
Reduced organic traffic is already happening.
Study/Source | Content Provider | Timeframe | Reported Traffic Decline | Notes/Findings |
LinkedIn (Poffel, 2025) 1 | HubSpot (Marketing blog) | Mar 2023–Jan 2025, Google AI/SGE | 75% decrease (24.4M → 6.1M) | Drop attributed to AI-generated answers reducing user clicks; debate over Google updates vs AI. |
| Chegg (Education Q&A) | 2024–2025, Google AI Overviews | 34% decrease (5.6M → 3.7M) | Chegg sued Google, alleging AI Overviews use their content to keep users on Google. |
| Stack Overflow (Programming Q&A) | 2024–2025, AI tools (ChatGPT, Copilot) | Significant decline (unspecified) | Developers get instant answers from AI, reducing visits to Stack Overflow. |
| Informational sites (various) | SGE early tests | 18–64% decrease | Especially for "easily answerable" informational queries. |
The Hoth (via MarketingEdge) 2 | General publishers (featured in AI Overview) | Post-May 2024, Google AI Overviews | 8.9% average drop | Sites not featured: 2.6% drop. Some small publishers: up to 70% decline (Bloomberg report). |
Forbes (2025) 3 | Industry-wide | Google AI Overviews | 15–64% decline | 60% of searches now yield zero clicks; top links pushed down, reducing click-through rates. |
Bain & Company (2025) 4 | General consumer search | 2025, AI summaries in search | 15–25% decrease | 80% of users rely on AI summaries for 40%+ of searches; 60% of searches end without a click. |
BrightEdge, SurferSEO, Conductor (via WhistlerBillboards) 5 | Mail Online (news), general sites, bloggers | March–May 2025, Google AI Overviews | Mail Online: 56% CTR drop; SurferSEO: 34.5% CTR drop for position 1; Conductor: up to 60% traffic drop | Fashion, travel, DIY, cooking, tech review, and health bloggers report up to 70% traffic loss. |
Ahrefs (via WhistlerBillboards) 5 | Small recipe and health bloggers | 2024–2025, Google AI Overviews | Up to 65% of top-page traffic lost | “How to” and “what is” queries especially impacted. |
Chegg (via WhistlerBillboards) 5 | Chegg (Education Q&A) | Jan 2024–Jan 2025 | 49% decline in non-subscriber traffic | Attributed to AI Overviews. |
Websites dependent on high-volume, low-depth traffic arguably are at risk, as the chatbots can aggregate this information without linking back.
On the other hand, language models prioritize content that is authoritative, unique, or contextually rich. That doesn’t always or necessarily mean a citation, but might be the necessary precondition.
The models likely will favor content from established experts or primary sources as well.
So content creators may need to optimize for being "noticed" and referenced by language models, rather than ranking high in search results.
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