Credit : Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash
Australian publishers have seen a double-digit decline in search traffic due to new AI models, AdNews can report.
Publishers are facing the brunt of AI summaries with referral traffic from search engines expected to drop by 43% over the next three years.
Aggregate data from content analytics company Chartbeat, shows Google traffic from organic search to over 2,500 publishers was down by 33% globally between November 2024 and November 2025.
In the report 'Journalism, media and technology trends and predictions 2026', 280 media leaders in 51 countries were surveyed.
Some industry experts believe the negative impacts will be less than 20%, while more than a fifth said they expect to lose more than 75% of their company’s search traffic, according to the report.
The major concern is Google AI summaries, which now appear at the top of around 10% of search results in the United States. The publishers that have experienced the most significant loss in traffic included those in the lifestyle or utility categories.
Local publishers have also seen a shift.
"In 2025 we saw a 17% decline in Google referrals compared to the previous year,” Broadsheet Australia editor, Nick Connellan, told AdNews.
“We were hit hardest by core updates in March and December, which led to successively lower baseline search traffic.”
While the findings suggest that publishers will start to invest less in Google search, others are opportunist.
Scott Purcell, co-founder at Man of Many, said publishers would be self-sabotaging to completely abandon search due to the impacts of AI Mode and the new “zero-click” economy.
“We have to look at the hard data,” he told AdNews.
“In 2024, 60% of all Google searches globally resulted in no click to an external site. With the rise of AI Overviews, studies show that 92-94% of informational queries now result in zero external clicks.
“However, the users haven't left; they are simply engaging differently, spending 60–100 seconds reading the AI-synthesised answer.
“We have shifted our primary KPI from "winning the click" to "winning the mention". If the user stays on the search page, we want Man of Many to be the cited source that influences their decision.
“I find the sentiment that publishers plan to 'put less effort' into search concerning.
“It risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy; if you withdraw from the ecosystem, you guarantee your own obscurity.”
Natalie Harvey, CEO at Mamamia, calls the decline a "seismic shift”, but also an opportunity to better “clarify” who its real audiences are.
“We aren’t viewing the decline of search as a crisis to be managed, we’re viewing it as "A Great Clarification,” she told AdNews.
“It’s the moment where the line between "traffic" and "audience" is finally being drawn.”
Search engine optimisation (SEO) may have secured reach in the past, but the current landscape requires relationships over reach. Publishers are moving away from chasing algorithms towards audience ownership.
This includes building security through “walled gardens", where audiences are owned, not rented.
"This writing's been on the wall for a long time though, and shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone," Connellan said.
"Growing our direct audience has been our focus for a number of years now."
Harvey said the difference between reach and relevance has been a confusion in the industry for many years.
“Search engines provided reach, but they didn't necessarily build relevance, which is now why we find some publishers feeling the heat more than others," Harvey said.
"As that search traffic dries up, we are seeing a move toward an industry where maintaining and increasing relevance is the only way to survive.”
Mamamia is investing in “direct connections” through its own app, newsletter and subscription products.
“Our mission now is turning unknown to known audiences,” Harvey said.
“When you own the platform, you don’t have to rent your audience from a search engine.”
Similarly, Man of Many has adapted to the "volatility” by pivoting so that visibility comes from owned audiences and first-party data, not clicks or algorithms.
“Relying on search or social algorithms is building on 'rented land',” he said.
“We are moving anonymous fly-by visitors into our ecosystem through newsletters, our mobile app, and membership tiers. This enables us to offer advertisers precise targeting based on real behavioural data, rather than relying on third-party cookies.”
The drop in referral traffic has inspired these publishers to move away from volume-based to value-based authority. And they have diversified digital offerings with the hopes of attracting a more engaged audience.
“If fewer people click through, a pure page view-led ad model gets tighter,” said Purcell.
“That pushes publishers towards a healthier mix: premium brand partnerships, commerce where it makes sense, video, events, and other products that are not dependent on a blue link being clicked."
While AI has been seen as the gatekeeper of clicks, publishers are aware it will take more than just a good content strategy to compete.
Mamamia has invested in Agentic AI employees to enable them to focus more on “driving deep, emotional connection” through their branded content.
“Reengineering our business isn't about simply making more content to chase fewer page views,” Harvey said.
“That’s a race to the bottom.”
She warns of the “commodity danger zone” and the importance of “human-led storytelling and expert analysis” as publishers. This is the unique value-proposition in an AI-dominated, information-saturated landscape.
“Reporting on "what happened" without a unique perspective or original information is a dangerous place to be in 2026,” she said.
“That kind of utility content is easily replicated and summarised by AI. What we primarily do, human-led storytelling and expert analysis, is much harder to replicate."
Purcell agrees that the human-premium is the “information gain”. By restricting AI to only be used for back-end efficiency and doubling down on original reporting, algorithms are going to recommend the source because it can’t replicate this unique information itself.
“Google’s algorithms are programmed to prioritise one thing: Trusted Human Authority (E-E-A-T),” he said.
“We are proud members of the 100% Human Initiative, a public commitment that our content is created by human experts. This ensures our work provides the "information gain" that AI models need to ingest for accuracy, distinguishing us from the "AI slop" clogging the web.
"We use AI for backend efficiency: data analysis and research, never for writing. To survive, content must be "un-summarisable", featuring unique data, strong opinions and first hand experiences.”
Research by AI marketing platform Ahrefs shows that 45.7% of all Google searches now include brand specific keywords, proving that as traffic has become increasingly fragmented, “brand trust” is imperative.
“AI models act as gatekeepers; if they don't recognise a brand as authoritative, they won't recommend it,” Purcell said.
“Because Man of Many is recognised by Google as a "Trusted Human Authority", a mention on our site effectively "transfers" that authority to the brands we cover.
"We are seeing that being cited in our expert content, even without a direct click, builds the crucial trust signals that AI models use to verify a brand's legitimacy.”
Harvey said in an era of AI-generated slop, trust is our armour.
"But it’s also our Popeye spinach," Harvey said.
"It protects us from the volatility of algorithms, but it also gives us the strength to grow in ways a bot never can. AI is a threat to the lazy, but it’s a massive opportunity for discoverability for brands that actually mean something to people.”
In 2026, local publishers will focus on what AI can’t replace: brand trust, authority. They will also monetise owned, human-led ecosystems.
“We must move toward a model of managed, monetised access, where AI platforms are treated as buyers of a premium asset rather than intruders scraping for free to train a competitor who is making money off the back of our work,” Harvey said.
“We aren't just surviving the Google decline, we are building the media company of the future by focusing on the one thing an algorithm can’t fake: human trust.”
AI is the new front door to relevancy, and publishers are making sure it makes the list.
“In the old "Traffic Era," the internet was a mall where you paid for a sign (SEO) to get people into your store,” Purcell said.
“In the "AI Authority Era," the internet is a concierge desk. The concierge (AI) only recommends the brands that the most respected critics are talking about.
"We aren't "investing less" in search; we are investing differently, ensuring the concierge knows our name.”
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.