World History Encyclopedia, the second most visited history site, says its traffic fell 25% in Nov. 2024 after AI search tools began presenting its information
World History Encyclopedia CEO Jan van der Crabben saw his site show up in Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT. Then traffic dropped 25%. Bluesky: @xsalty1 , @olicommish , @kantrowitz , @bcmerchant , and @bcmerchant . Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to . X: @ericfranchi . LinkedIn: Georg Zoeller Bluesky: @xsalty1 : World History Encyclopedia, the second most visited history site, says its traffic fell 25% in Nov. 2024 after AI search tools began MISpresenting its information (Alex Kantrowitz/Big Technology) — There fixed it. @olicommish : Remember the early days of the internet when the Courts would hammer people who stole intellectual property? Now IP theft is big business and the Courts are silent. [embedded post] Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : World History Encyclopedia CEO Jan van der Crabben saw his site show up in Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT. Then traffic dropped 25%. — www.bigtechnology.com/p/as-ai- take... Brian Merchant / @bcmerchant : Not to be pedantic here, either, but “AI” is not taking his readers. Google and OpenAI and Perplexity are taking his readers, specifically to drive up their user bases and ad sales, on the back of his (and countless others') work. [embedded post] Brian Merchant / @bcmerchant : Let's just start calling this what it is, it should not be confusing anymore. It's theft. Google Overview + ChatGPT are appropriating this work—untold hours of research and writing—and presenting it on their platform with scant links and sources, and in Google's case, selling ads against it. … Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : The World History Encyclopedia has lost 25% of its traffic since AI tools started showing its information. — The web used to be a symbiotic relationship between websites and search engines. You publish information that Google shows to searchers and in return, they send you traffic. … X: Eric Franchi / @ericfranchi : Highly recommend reading @Kantrowitz's latest Big Technology (link below). In it he profiles the World History Encyclopedia, whose traffic dropped 25% in November after seeing their content begin to show up in AI Overviews. How people use the internet is being reshaped by AI LinkedIn: Georg Zoeller : The “open knowledge” web is dying as the data fracking scrapers extract value to feed AI models, destroying the ecosystem. …
Context & Ripple Effects
This report turns a previously anticipated publisher risk into a concrete claim from a major reference site: audience strategists had already been adapting to Google's AI Overviews and their traffic implications. It also sits beside a broader dispute over whether publishers can control AI access, as outlets have increasingly blocked AI web crawlers.
First-order effects
- World History Encyclopedia says it lost 25% of traffic in November 2024 as Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT surfaced its information, reducing visits that would otherwise reach the source site.
- Google and OpenAI gain a more self-contained answer experience, while the encyclopedia faces an immediate distribution and referral-risk problem.
Second-order effects
- Other information publishers have added reason to reassess SEO, crawler permissions, and the trade-off between appearing in AI answers and retaining direct traffic.
- Pressure rises for AI-search operators to make attribution and outbound referrals valuable enough for source sites, particularly where answers may misrepresent the underlying material.
Third-order effects
- If AI interfaces routinely satisfy informational queries without sending users onward, reference publishers' economic role can shift from destination sites to upstream inference inputs, weakening the link between producing authoritative material and capturing audience.
- The resulting conflict is likely to center on publisher control: whether technical blocking and negotiated access can create sustainable terms for content used in AI search.
The trend: AI search is moving web publishing toward a contest over whether visibility inside an answer engine can compensate for the loss of direct audience ownership.