These developments accelerated the decline of traditional referral traffic to publishers and sparked growing resistance from publishers worldwide. All this led to zero‑click news searches to rise to nearly 69% (from ~56% a year earlier).
Here is our brief review of the most important news media trend of the 2025 so far.
1. AI Overviews in search: convenience at a cost
First deployed widely in May 2024, AI Overviews surged during the review period. These compact, multi-source AI summaries appear atop search results for informational queries, often supplanting the need to click deeper.
The publisher pain point:
Major outlets reported search traffic drops ranging from 30% up to 80%, especially for evergreen queries (e.g. “how to” content).
The “click‑through rate” for traditional news results dropped historically — clicks fell from ~15% to less than 8%, and only ~1% clicked from within a summary itself.
In reversal of Google’s stated goal, publishers often did not see more clicks when links were inside AI summaries, but fewer.
Studies show citation concentration: the top 3–10 outlets like BBC, NYT, CNN capture ~80% of mentions, squeezing out smaller and niche publishers.
2. AI Summaries in Discover: A New Front
Starting mid‑July 2025, Google began embedding AI-generated summaries in Discover (its personalized mobile feed), particularly for lifestyle and entertainment topics in the U.S.
Impact on publishers:
Small and mid-tier media reported 15–30% drops in Discover referrals since rollout, disrupting a previously dependable source of traffic flow.
Summaries de‑emphasize publisher identity often showing a brand logo plus AI synopsis and keep users from clicking through to the full article.
3. AI Mode: Conversation Replaces Navigation
Rolled out experimentally in the U.S. in March 2025 via Search Labs (and expanded to the UK recently), AI Mode uses Google’s powerful Gemini model to deliver conversational, multimodal search experiences.
Though still early in adoption, AI Mode is poised to deepen the shift toward answer-first search, where users receive summarized AI results, not lists of links, further diluting click-through traffic to publishers.
What's next?
Publishers are rapidly embracing Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — designing content to be discoverable within AI-generated summaries and conversational search environments.
Industry advice includes investing in newsletters, social platforms, apps, and direct audience models to reduce dependence on Google referrals. Email communities, subscriptions, events, and first-party data are now survival imperatives