Google AI search shift leaves website makers feeling ‘betrayed’

Bloomberg Davey Alba and Julia Love In March website owner Morgan McBride was posing for photos in her half-renovated kitchen for a Google ad celebrating the avenues the search giant had helped her family s business grow But by the time the ad ran about a month later traffic from Google had fallen more than McBride declared Charleston Crafted which features guides on do-it-yourself home improvement projects had weathered algorithm changes and updates in the past this time it didn t recover McBride suspected people were getting more of their renovation advice from the artificial intelligence answers at the top of Google search The now-ubiquitous AI-generated answers and the way Google has changed its search algorithm to promotion them have caused traffic to independent websites to plummet according to Bloomberg interviews with publishers and people who work with them That s disrupting a delicate symbiotic relationship that s existed for years if businesses create good content Google sends them traffic A great number of of the publishers disclosed they have to either shut down or reinvent their distribution strategy a cycle experts say could eventually degrade the quality of information Google can access for its search results and to feed its AI answers which have still at times contained inaccuracies that have made them a poor substitute for publishers content For home-renovation questions Google s AI may give advice that s unsafe or entirely inaccurate such as recommending specific products that don t exist McBride explained Google denied that the rollout of AI Overviews had harmed websites traffic saying it was misleading to make generalizations about the causes of declining traffic based on individual examples A spokesperson added that traffic can fluctuate for a number of reasons including seasonal demand users interests and regular algorithmic updates to search But the traffic drops have been widely felt across the web and have spanned topics fashion and lifestyle tour DIY and home design and cooking according to Bloomberg s interviews and content from web-analytics firm Similarweb which analyzed traffic to a sampling of small- to mid-sized websites in each of these categories over the past two years It s practicable that AI Overviews were a factor disclosed Similarweb which carried out the research at Bloomberg s request For McBride the episode made her rethink her identity as a writer and a lecturer she announced Certain days it was hard to even get out of bed Though she hopes Google can help bring certain traffic back she mentioned the long-term damage to her business is done You can t just sit around waiting for things to turn around she commented in an interview In the year since Charleston Crafted s traffic plummeted she reported display advertising revenue on her site dropped amounting to tens of thousands of dollars in lost income Evolving Search Google is changing search in response to new techniques people consume information a spokesperson mentioned The company is trying to give quicker answers as well as options for digging deeper this person reported But behind closed doors the company has acknowledged the toll on publishers even inviting a group of about website creators to its Mountain View California headquarters for conversations with employees in the search division last October Google representatives apologized to the web creators and commented their sites represented exactly the kind of helpful content that the company yearned to surface in search according to creators who were in attendance But Googlers also reported they couldn t give any guarantees that their websites would recover because the search product had fundamentally changed in the AI era multiple attendees explained A few creators say Google has in recent weeks made so countless changes to search coinciding with its testing of AI-powered features and an effort to rid its results of AI-generated spam that it has choked traffic to independent websites in favor of forums like Reddit and Quora as well as larger media brands Related Articles Creating and sharing deceptive AI-generated media is now a crime in New Jersey Opinion The tech fantasy that powers AI is running on fumes Plug and Play AI startup incubator launches downtown San Jose tech hub San Jose tech records center might sprout on empty land sites in Alviso Private groups work to identify and summary pro-Palestinian scholar protesters for achievable deportation I don t understand how Google thinks this is sustainable disclosed Jake Boly founder of the That Fit Friend which reviews training shoes If you drive away all enthusiasts and small publishers then we re going to be overrun by spam and the sparse players who can afford to pay to play A Google spokesperson noted the company s research has shown that users who come to Google looking for authentic first-hand experiences often prefer forum discussions and video content in addition to blogs The addition of AI Overviews in which Google summarizes content from the web to deliver answers in its own voice has coincided with a series of other changes to search and ranking algorithms that have left creators struggling to adjust The company has long emphasized that website owners should focus on making content driven by experience expertise authoritativeness and trustworthiness or EEAT as the set of guidelines is known to publishers This means creators should expect that Google would prioritize passage sites where the writers had truly visited the destinations they featured But traffic has bottomed out even for sites that have followed Google s advice creators say For years Google has had the audacity to gaslight us saying Don t write for search disclosed Mike Hardaker the founder of Mountain Weekly News which reviews outdoor gear Well then who am I writing for It s an increasingly familiar story for small businesses worldwide navigating their relationships with Meta Platforms Inc s Facebook and Instagram TikTok Google s YouTube or Amazon com Inc While the instrument giants all rely on a healthy ecosystem of creators merchants and influencers to generate content for their sites changes to their revenue-sharing agreements or algorithms can be devastating No Guarantees At the October web creator meeting Hardaker explained Google s chief search scientist Pandu Nayak that the majority of the group had struggled with little to no web traffic for more than a year according to detailed notes of the event that were reviewed by Bloomberg Hardaker himself had made in gross revenue in But by the time of the meeting he declared he was relying on a food bank I need to know as a business owner and personally if you think there s a chance that particular of our sites have the ability to recover he mentioned at the event Nayak apologized according to attendees Then he revealed it wouldn t be reasonable for him to make any guarantees to the publishers because he couldn t predict what would happen A Google spokesperson commented the creators invited to this event aren t representative of the whole web creator ecosystem But a larger analysis conducted by Similarweb of small publisher sites which included at least a dozen sites each across four topics fashion and lifestyle journey DIY and home design and cooking uncovered declines in web traffic in every category Excursion which Google has of late rolled out robust AI features for saw the bulk pronounced declines according to the information Google disputed Similarweb s findings saying the web traffic of this larger sample still doesn t capture search traffic overall Part of the difficulty is that low-quality sites that Google does want to root out through its search algorithm updates including AI-generated spam sites that have seen a meteoric rise in latest years can have a similar look and feel to indie websites reported Lily Ray senior vice president for search engine optimization strategy at marketing agency Amsive LLC Creators have documented examples of Google s algorithms seemingly prioritizing content from low-quality sources which they say is bad for users Right now Google is suggesting that specific of the best advice about where to go to the beach near Philadelphia comes from a luggage storage company and a driving school revealed Laura Longwell of the blog Journey Addicts The idea that any of that is based on experience or expertise is laughable Other times once-popular sites whose domains were sold and repurposed by clickbait farms have been highlighted by Google AI Overviews Plenty of publishers and creators are greater part worried about AI Overviews Raptive a media company that represents creators estimates that sites will ultimately lose of their traffic to the product though the initial impact across its clients has been less pronounced as Google ramps up the proportion of queries that trigger AI summaries Google has mentioned AI Overviews is driving more traffic to a diverse mix of publishers but the company hasn t provided figures to back up that assertion According to the statistics firm BrightEdge the sites receiving the preponderance referral traffic from AI Overviews are primarily big players like TripAdvisor Wikipedia Mayo Clinic and Google s own YouTube rather than smaller publishers In the absence of clear answers from the company creators have struggled to discern how much of their pain is due to AI Overviews and how much is due to other changes in search They don t have any way of saying Oh this is my content that has been queried and is being used to answer this particular search aftermath declared Brooke Hartley Moy chief executive officer of Infactory an AI startup that works with publishers Gisele Navarro managing editor for the air purifier review site HouseFresh commented that based on internal web analytics which she shared with Bloomberg it appears more people are seeing her content via AI Overviews But it s happening at the expense of them clicking the link to visit her site Sites don t make money unless users click through and see ads or buy products This same trend more views of a website owner s content on Google but fewer clicks through to their sites is occurring broadly according to Nick Eubanks a vice president at the digital marketing company Semrush Holdings Inc He mentioned AI Overviews is one of several factors that have contributed to this and the trend would likely continue as summaries are shown for more queries Betrayed That s the Word Google is making other changes to get its users answers without having to click through to a website The company has begun testing a new recipe feature that summarizes food bloggers content directly in Google search Creators who are participating in a pilot with Google are being directly compensated but not nearly enough to offset declines in their advertising revenue according to Marc McCollum Raptive s chief innovation officer If the feature is implemented in full Raptive estimates that traffic to food blogs would fall by half The power dynamic between Google and individual creators is so lopsided that a multitude of publishers who were invited to participate in the recipe pilot felt they didn t have much of a choice commented Lisa Bryan the author of health-food site Downshiftology who is not involved but is close with creators who are The big fear Bryan announced is that Google is severing the relationship that we have with our communities and our audiences Google explained the feature is an attempt to help users determine whether they are interested in a recipe before visiting a site Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai stressed in a latest interview that Google is focused on sending publishers high-quality clicks or readers who genuinely want to visit their sites But Danielle Coffey president of the News Media Alliance questioned whether Google is in a position to know what s useful to publishers Why are they unilaterally deciding what is a high-quality click and how we should engage our readers when we re the ones creating the content she reported Pressure is mounting on Google to reassess its compact with publishers Raptive has struck an agreement with several hundred of its largest creators to negotiate with Google and other big tech companies on their behalf But it s too late for several At least three of the sites whose publishers were invited to Google s creator summit have had to shut down their operations Others have been testing new distribution routes Dave Bouskill and Debra Corbeil a Toronto-based couple launched advance blog The Planet D in For the first scarce years the pair relied on TV appearances and newspaper features to find readers but in they woke up to the prospective of Google Search which eventually drove of their traffic Their luck ran out in when Google launched AI Overviews In the first sparse months after the product s introduction Planet D s traffic fell by half and the pair watched their fellow journey bloggers go out of business one by one Bouskill and Corbeil at first thought they d be able to survive with a smaller business but their readership continued to crater forcing them to lay off staff Absolutely when traffic fell by of prior levels and revenue almost as much they decided to stop updating their blog It s been painful for them to watch Google s AI Overviews parrot trip tips they once offered especially when the chatbot borrows their Canadian slang I do feel betrayed by Google Bouskill announced as Corbeil interjected Betrayed that s the word To rebuild their livelihood the couple has pivoted their efforts to YouTube another Google-owned property Updates to add summary takeaway from Similarweb research in sixth paragraph More stories like this are available on bloomberg com Bloomberg L P