News publishers are bracing for a sharp decline in search-driven traffic over the next three years as artificial intelligence increasingly transforms how people find information online, according to a new report by the Reuters Institute.
The report, Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026, finds that media executives expect search referrals to fall by an average of 43% by 2029, with one in five respondents predicting losses of more than 75%. The shift is being driven largely by search engines evolving into AI-powered “answer engines” that provide direct responses to users without requiring them to click through to publisher websites.
Data cited in the report underline that the decline is already underway. Chartbeat figures show that organic Google search traffic fell 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025, and 38% in the United States over the same period. Executives surveyed attribute much of this drop to features such as Google’s AI Overviews, which now appear at the top of roughly 10% of U.S. search results and are associated with higher rates of zero-click searches.
The impact, however, is not uniform across content categories. Lifestyle and utility-focused content – including weather updates, TV listings, and horoscopes – is considered most vulnerable, as such information can be easily summarised by AI systems. Hard news content has so far been more resilient, though publishers warn that this insulation may not last as AI models become more capable.
In response, publishers are beginning to rethink long-standing search strategies. The report highlights a growing shift away from traditional search engine optimisation (SEO) toward answer engine optimisation (AEO) and generative engine optimisation (GEO), which focus on ensuring content is visible and cited within AI-generated responses from tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Many media organisations surveyed said they plan to reduce investment in classic Google-focused SEO and prioritise distribution inside AI platforms, even though referral traffic from chatbots remains relatively small. The report describes current chatbot-driven traffic as “a rounding error” compared with Google, but notes that growth is rapid and strategically significant.
Beyond traffic losses, publishers are also grappling with new challenges around attribution and monetisation. As AI agents summarise content or complete tasks on behalf of users, it becomes less clear what constitutes a “visit” and how value should be measured. As a result, licensing deals, revenue-sharing agreements, and negotiated citation or prominence within AI systems are emerging as parallel strategies to compensate for declining referrals.
The Reuters Institute concludes that a new performance framework is taking shape, where metrics such as share of answer, citation visibility, and brand recall may become as important as clicks. For publishers, the message is stark: search will still matter, but the era in which clicks were the primary currency of online visibility is rapidly fading.
