Google says AI is helping the web, publishers say it’s killing their traffic

Google wants you to believe that its AI-powered search tools are making the web better. But publishers aren’t buying it.

In a blog post published August 6, the company pushed back against criticism that AI Overviews and AI Mode — two of its biggest updates to Search — are eating into website traffic. Google insists that the opposite is true: people are searching more, asking deeper questions, and clicking through to more meaningful content.

The company claims that overall traffic from Search has stayed relatively stable year over year, and that…