The great traffic reckoning: how publishers can grow despite the AI search drop

TL;DR Publishers who are building direct relationships with their readers – through apps, newsletters, and registration – are still growing revenue. Publishers who depend on search to bring readers in are seeing the steepest drops in traffic and revenue.

What's happening

According to Piano’s benchmark data across hundreds of publisher sites, search traffic dropped by 36%. Revenue fell just 16%, and overall audience 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 exempted from AI Overviews.

Most media leaders surveyed expect search traffic to fall another 43% within three years, and a fifth expect losses above 75%.

Invest in direct reader relationships

Publishers still growing revenue despite declining traffic use a few key tactics: they raise prices, focus on churn reduction and invest in channels they control. We covered pricing and churn reduction in our earlier benchmark update. Here we look at the use of email lists, apps and registered audience, none of which depend on a platform deciding whether your content gets seen.

Advance Local launched 15 subscriber-exclusive newsletters in 2024 across its 10 US markets. Subscribers receiving those newsletters retained at rates up to 40% higher than those who didn't. A newsletter list is yours – it doesn't shrink when an algorithm changes.

The practical starting point: figure out what percentage of your current audience you can reach without a referral source. If most of your readers are anonymous, you have no way to reach them when search traffic drops further – no email address, no account, no way to serve them a personalized experience that brings them back.

Make registration a priority

When search traffic was high, anonymous visitors didn't matter – there were always more coming. Now, every reader who leaves without registering is one you have no direct way to reach.

Registration walls, newsletter signup prompts, and free account creation all serve the same purpose: converting a one-time visitor into a known reader you can reach again. The faster that happens in a session, the more value you get from traffic that's already declining – and the less dependent you are on any single referral source.

We saw this play out with a major US public media organization in our client base. Their search visitors converted to paid subscriptions at a better rate than direct visitors – but the volume was falling and unpredictable. They built personalized "For You" pages to give readers a reason to return directly, added app download prompts for mobile visitors, and used content recommendations to extend sessions. Exit-intent recommendations alone saved 3.6% of first-time visitors from leaving – and those readers came back more engaged.

A major US business publisher removed a redundant verification step from its registration flow using Piano's Composer. Desktop subscription completions jumped 52%. Mobile completions jumped 184%.

Invest in content that earns citations, not just rankings

Ranking for high-volume informational queries puts you in direct competition with AI Overviews – exactly the content that's lost the most traffic.

What's working instead is editorial authority. Being cited in an AI Overview drives significantly more clicks than appearing in search results without a citation, according to Seer Interactive's analysis of 42 organizations – 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks. The publishers getting cited are the ones with distinctive, trusted editorial voices. Original reporting, first-person analysis, and coverage with a clear point of view are also the content types that build brand recognition, drive direct visits, and sustain subscriptions.

What to measure now

Moderately and highly engaged search visitors convert to subscriptions at significantly higher rates than one-off visitors. The metrics worth tracking are the ones that help you find and convert them faster:

Share of known vs. anonymous users in your audience
Newsletter subscriber growth and open rates
App downloads and monthly active users
Registration conversion rate by traffic source
Pages per session and return visit rate among search visitors who do arrive

If pageviews from organic search is still your primary KPI, you're optimizing for a channel that's actively shrinking. Shift toward engagement depth, known-user conversion rates, and subscriber lifetime value. The publishers who make that shift now will be better positioned for whatever platform change comes next.