The arrival of AI search bodes ill for everyone who relies on web search to have their business discovered, their blog post read, or their journalism funded
With AI search results coming to the masses, the human-powered web recedes further into the background
Context & Ripple Effects
This warning arrived alongside Google's planned rollout of AI-generated search summaries, a change already framed as a threat to publisher referrals in coverage of the rollout's publisher impact. It matters because search has long been the discovery layer connecting readers and customers to sites rather than merely an answer surface.
Later coverage makes the distribution concern more concrete: Similarweb reported sharp declines in organic traffic at major news publishers as Google's AI tools expanded the evidence of publisher traffic losses. The response has also begun to create a market for tools that optimize content for AI summaries.
First-order effects
- Businesses, bloggers, and publishers face fewer opportunities to earn a click when a search interface supplies a synthesized answer before displaying source links.
- Publishers' search-referred audiences—and the advertising and subscription funnels attached to them—become more exposed to changes in how prominently sources are cited.
Second-order effects
- Organizations that depend on search discovery have an incentive to shift effort from conventional SEO toward AI-search visibility, favoring specialists that can influence citation and summary inclusion.
- A lower-referral environment raises the value of direct audience relationships and makes traffic concentration in the search platform more consequential for smaller sites and newsrooms.
Third-order effects
- If answer-led search becomes the default interface, the web's economic model may move from monetizing visits to competing for inclusion as an input to an AI response—a shift captured by the rise of generative-engine optimization.
- The resulting imbalance between content creation and referral value could intensify pressure for publisher controls, commercial terms, or other mechanisms that govern AI use of web content; the eventual balance remains uncertain.
The trend: AI search is shifting online discovery from link-driven referral toward platform-controlled answer distribution, reshaping who captures value from web content.
Related: AI distribution advantage · Publisher controls for AI search · Content as Inference Input · Google AI summaries and publisher traffic · Google AI tools and organic publisher traffic · Generative engine optimization startups
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- “A quarter-century into its existence, a company that once proudly served as an entry point to a web that it nourished with traffic and advertising revenue has begun to abstract that all away into an input for its large language models.” — https://www.platformer.news/ ... @mike@flipboard.social · Mike McCue
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Discussion
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@crumbler
Casey Newton
on threads
With today's announcements at Google I/O, the web has entered a state of managed decline https://www.platformer.news/ ...
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@andrewgiambrone
Andrew Giambrone
on x
“Google will now do the Googling for you, and everyone who benefited from humans doing the Googling will very soon need to come up with a Plan B.” (via @platformer) https://www.platformer.news/ ...
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@pranavdixit
@pranavdixit
on x
The way Google fundamentally shook up its search engine today was a good reminder to never take anything for granted.
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@brucel
Bruce Lawson
on x
“A quarter-century into its existence, a company that once proudly served as an entry point to a web that it nourished with traffic and advertising revenue has begun to abstract that all away into an input for its large language models.” https://www.platformer.news/ ...
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@reckless1280
Nilay Patel
on threads
Google Zero, baby. Been saying it for years; the CEO of the NYT literally asked me if I really believed it
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@kalihays1
Kali Hays
on threads
“The company expects AI Overviews to be available to ‘over a billion’ users by the end of 2024.” This will remake online news/digital media.
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@somegadgetguy
Juan Carlos Bagnell
on threads
There's a LOT I like about these GoogleIO demos, but I'm REELING from the search presentation. As Google is already facing more and more scrutiny for wrecking website traffic, I'm shocked they're boldly showing how they'll intercept even more website traffic by using AI to answe…
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@joannastern
Joanna Stern
on threads
Google never wants you to leave Google. What could possibly go wrong?
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@google
@google
on x
By the end of the year, AI Overviews will come to over a billion people in Google Search. With Search in the Gemini era, Google does more of the work for you — from answering your most complex questions to helping you get things done. #GoogleIO [image]
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@google
@google
on x
Coming soon, we'll bring new multi-step reasoning capabilities to Google Search. It breaks your bigger question down into parts and figures out which problems to solve and in what order, so research that might've taken you minutes or even hours can be done in seconds. #GoogleIO […
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@google
@google
on x
And you'll also be able to ask questions with video, right in Search. Coming soon. #GoogleIO [image]
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@google
@google
on x
This is Search in the Gemini era. #GoogleIO [video]
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@carnage4life
Dare Obasanjo
on x
I think Google's AI overviews in the search generative experience have stopped the bleeding with regard to Google being less useful each year. The user experience is much better but I'm definitely clicking on websites less. AI sadly creates many incentives to eat your seed corn. …
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@google
@google
on x
“Google Search is generative AI at the scale of human curiosity — and this is our most exciting chapter of Search yet.” - @SundarPichai #GoogleIO [image]
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@arshamg_
Arsham
on x
the end game is every text box, search bar, microphone, input etc will have an LLM attached Google has an insane distribution advantage here but they're fumbling so hard
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@ptsi
Philipp Tsipman
on x
🌶️ take: my guess is that SEO will now become more critical for companies, even as search traffic collapses. Now you still have a shot at being seen even if you're link #8. In the future, AI will pretty much summarize the top links and if you're out, you're OUT. Thoughts?
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@rustybrick
Barry Schwartz
on x
Google rolls out AI Overviews in US with more countries coming soon - what does this mean for SEOs - I go deep here https://searchengineland.com/ ... [image]
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@glenngabe
Glenn Gabe
on x
A few key points: Limited queries. “You won't see AI Overviews for all your searches. AI Overviews are reserved to answer more complex questions where Google feels it can add value beyond the search results, Budaraju told us. If AI Overview doesn't add value to what Google Sea…
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@searchliaison
@searchliaison
on x
AI Overviews will begin rolling out to everyone today in the US, with more countries coming soon. They provide both a quick overview of a topic and links to learn more. We've found that with AI Overviews, people use Search more, and are more satisfied with their results....
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@kevinroose
Kevin Roose
on x
Ever since ChatGPT came out, publishers have been worrying about what would happen to the open web if Google decided to feature generative AI summaries in core search results for its billions of users. We're about to find out! https://www.nytimes.com/...
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@bentossell
Ben Tossell
on x
So google will have the best search & ai experience and the widest reach Obviously
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@rowancheung
Rowan Cheung
on x
Google is changing the way we use Google Search through Gemini AI Agents. They announced multi-step reasoning so Google can do the ‘searching for you’ through multiple steps. It essentially breaks down your questions into parts and figures out which problems to solve first (and..…
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@edzitron
Ed Zitron
on x
Watching Google I/O, it's clear that Sundar Pichai and Google intend to make Google Search into a question and answer platform where Google controls as much of the message as possible. Also lol at him saying the “high quality of our results”
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@mishaalrahman
Mishaal Rahman
on x
AI Overviews in Google Search is rolling out to everyone in the US and coming to more countries soon! [image]
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@jbillinson
Josh Billinson
on threads
oh cool, google dot com got a new feature that lets you search the world wide web
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@searchliaison
@searchliaison
on x
We've launched a new “Web” filter that shows only text-based links, just like you might filter to show other types of results, such as images or videos. The filter appears on the top of the results page alongside other filters or as part of the “More” option, rolling out today...…
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@dannysullivan
Danny Sullivan
on x
Since I joined Google, I've just been a boy standing in front of the search group asking it to love a Web filter. So happy to see it's arrived - congrats to the hard-working team on this project that through their own efforts made it a reality!
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@rajanpatel
Rajan Patel
on x
Glad we could come through for you @dannysullivan. Some people prefer information via images or videos, and well some others love the everything on the Web. We're trying to build the right Search experience for everyone! [image]
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@searchliaison
@searchliaison
on x
We've added this after hearing from some that there are times when they'd prefer to just see links to web pages in their search results, such as if they're looking for longer-form text documents, using a device with limited internet access, or those who just prefer text-based...
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@mmichaelllucy
Michael Lucy
on x
a search engine that searches the web and returns a list of pages that match your search term ... at last
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@emmatolkin
@emmatolkin
on x
You know what would be even better than this revolutionary new feature? If we could opt to remove AI results. Y'know, so the search engine worked again? Just a thought!
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@samfbiddle
Sam Biddle
on x
Wow this is super cool—there's going to be an “internet search engine” feature added to Google