News sites are getting crushed by Google’s new AI tools

Chatbots are replacing Google’s traditional search, devastating traffic for some publishers

Posted Tuesday, June 10, 2025 9:00 am

Isabella Simonetti and Katherine Blunt | The Wall Street Journal

The AI armageddon is here for online news publishers.

Chatbots are replacing Google searches, eliminating the need to click on blue links and tanking referrals to news sites. As a result, traffic that publishers relied on for years is plummeting.

Traffic from organic search to HuffPost’s desktop and mobile websites fell by just over half in the past three years, and by nearly that much at The Washington Post, according to digital market data firm Similarweb.

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News sites are getting crushed by Google’s new AI tools

Chatbots are replacing Google’s traditional search, devastating traffic for some publishers

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