Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for March 7, #369

Numerous studies indicate that the shift to AI search features and the use of AI chatbots are killing traffic to publishers’ sites. But Google on Wednesday denied that’s the case, at least in aggregate. Instead, the search giant says that total organic click volume from its search engine to websites has been “relatively stable” year-over-year and that average click quality has slightly increased.

“This data is in contrast to third-party reports that inaccurately suggest dramatic declines in aggregate traffic — often based on flawed methodologies, isolated examples, or traffic changes that occurred prior to the roll out of AI features in Search,” writes Google VP and Head of Search, Liz Reid, in a new blog post.

Though Google hasn’t shared any specific data to back up its conclusions, even if we assume Google’s claims to be true, this doesn’t necessarily mean that AI isn’t having an impact.

Even Google has to admit this, as Reid acknowledges that “user trends are shifting traffic to different sites, resulting in decreased traffic to some sites and increased traffic to others.”

That word “some” is doing heavy lifting here, as Google doesn’t share data about how many sites are gaining or losing. And while chatbots like ChatGPT have certainly seen traffic increase in recent months, that doesn’t mean online publishers aren’t suffering.

Image Credits:Google

Google has been revamping its search engine for years to answer more questions directly on the search results page, and now does so with AI through its “AI Overviews” that appear at the top of search results. Google also allows users to interact with an AI chatbot for some queries. Yet Google denies that this is significantly reshaping the search landscape. Rather, it points to users shifting their attention to other sites to start their queries.

Reid explains, “People are increasingly seeking out and clicking on sites with forums, videos, podcasts, and posts where they can hear authentic voices and first-hand perspectives.”

Reading between the lines, it seems like Google.com isn’t necessarily people’s first stop on the web these days. But that’s something we’ve known for some time. Back in 2022, a Google exec even said that social sites like TikTok and Instagram were eating into Google’s core products, like Search and Maps.

“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search,” said Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan, who ran the company’s Knowledge and Information organization at the time (he is now its Chief Technologist). “They go to TikTok or Instagram,” he noted.

Google has also long been worried that Amazon.com had become people’s first stop for online shopping searches, and Reddit.com had become the first stop for researching topics of interest.

Over many years, the company has tried to come up with compelling features for both consumers and retailers that would attract more users to Google Shopping. These efforts have included universal shopping carts, local inventory checks, deal finders, shopping from product images on websites, and more. It even made its Shopping listings free for merchants in 2020.

Meanwhile, as users complained that Google Search quality was declining, the search giant was seeing so much demand for Reddit that it finally added a “Reddit” filter to allow users to narrow down results on relevant search queries. (Now that filter simply reads, “forums.”)

So perhaps there’s some truth in Google’s denials — it’s not AI that’s entirely responsible for killing search. Search was already dying.

Close-up of a person’s hand holding an iPhone and using Google AI Mode, an experimental mode utilizing artificial intelligence and large language models to process Google search queries, Lafayette, California, March 24, 2025. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)Image Credits:Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images

Google’s new blog post also attempts to move the goal posts a bit about what it means for websites receiving Google’s clicks. Now, instead of counting clicks, it wants publishers to think about click quality.

The company says average click quality has increased, and Google is sending “slightly more quality clicks” to websites than a year ago. (Google explains that a quality click is one where users don’t quickly click back — they stay and read.) How much of an increase, though, Google doesn’t say. The company only points out that when people click through on an AI response to the source, they’re more likely to dive deeper, so those clicks are more valuable.

What’s more, Google paints AI as an opportunity for web publishers to gain increased exposure, saying that “…with AI Overviews, people are seeing more links on the page than before,” as Reid writes. “More queries and more links mean more opportunities for websites to surface and get clicked.”

But AI, while a growing referral source, isn’t yet making up the difference in terms of clicks, reports have shown. One recent study from Similarweb indicates that the number of news searches on the web resulting in zero clicks to news websites has grown from 56% (when Google launched AI Overviews in May 2024) to 69% as of May 2025.

Image Credits:Similarweb

Google appears to knows this is a trend, too, as it recently launched a product for publishers that helps them monetize their dwindling traffic in other ways that don’t rely only on advertising, like micropayments or newsletter sign-ups.

The fact that Google is pushing this “AI is not the end of search traffic!” PR now only makes the situation seem more dire. It’s as if Google wants publishers to believe not what their own eyes — and graphs and charts — tell them, but instead take comfort in the fact that Google still sends “billions of clicks to websites” every day, just as the post claims.