This shift in user behavior is having enormous consequences: informational and educational websites are experiencing an unprecedented collapse in organic traffic. And it’s not just small bloggers—major international news outlets are being hit as well.
The numbers behind the collapse
According to Digital Content Next, publishers like NYT, Vox, and Condé Nast lost up to 25% of referral traffic in just weeks. Year-over-year, the average drop is 10%: –7% for news sites and –14% for general-interest sites.
The New York Post reports even more dramatic numbers: Forbes –40%, HuffPost –40%, DailyMail –32%, CNN –28%, Washington Post –27%, Wall Street Journal –17%. And all this despite major global events that should have driven spikes in traffic.
The Wall Street Journal confirms: leading news publishers have been “crushed” by AI. Business Insider even cut its staff in half due to the traffic slump, showing that this is not only a technological phenomenon but an economic and occupational one as well.
The outlook is equally grim: according to SEMrush, within 2–4 years, traffic generated by AI responses could surpass traditional organic search. Sites that fail to adapt risk definitive marginalization.
The trend of zero-click searches is already well established: Coalition Technologies estimates that 60% of all searches today result in no clicks to external websites. Most users now find their “answers” directly on Google.
From SEO to AEO
It’s no coincidence that SEO experts now talk almost exclusively about Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). By 2026, brands that fail to adapt could lose up to 40% of their organic traffic (source).
This decline in traffic translates directly into lost ad revenue. Fewer visits = fewer impressions = fewer clicks = fewer earnings. For many publishers, this undermines the entire economic model built on banners and AdSense.
This crisis is not just about traffic—it strikes at the very heart of the web’s business model over the past two decades. Google and publishers thrived on search-linked advertising, but if visits fall, the whole system risks collapse.
A web that dug its own grave
Yet the responsibility does not lie solely with AI. Websites themselves contributed to their downfall. In the years leading up to AI’s rise, the web was flooded with clickbait portals, superficial content, and aggressive SEO strategies.
Alongside authoritative sources like Stack Overflow, sites like Quora proliferated—often chaotic and unreliable—favoring quantity over quality. It was a fragile informational ecosystem, destined to collapse at the first technological disruption.
The case of Aranzulla is emblematic: “tutorials” designed to intercept as many searches as possible, built more to rank on SERPs than to truly inform. A model replicated by thousands of sites that progressively degraded the quality of the web.
The outcome was clear: in the pre-AI years, the internet shifted from a source of knowledge to a source of revenue, betraying the original principles of the WWW and eroding user trust.
The vacuum filled by AI
So when AI finally arrived, the choice seemed obvious: direct, precise answers without banners or intrusive pop-ups, theoretically free of clickbait, off-topic noise, or thinly veiled promotions.
In short, AI filled the void left by websites that had sacrificed quality and authority for business, offering the illusion that it could do the filtering and selection work users could no longer rely on publishers to perform.
Reinvent or disappear
So what now? Websites won’t vanish overnight, but survival will require reinvention. Producing “SEO-friendly” content is no longer enough: publishers must learn to write for AI, structuring texts as concise answers ready to be cited in generative results.
This is the logic of AEO and GEO: using metadata, FAQs, structured formats, and deep content designed to be understood by AI systems, not just traditional crawlers (source).
But technique alone won’t be enough. A return to quality is needed: original data, proprietary analysis, authentic storytelling, content that large language models cannot simply replicate. In other words: offering what AI cannot generate.
New business models
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, even proposed a new business model: requiring AI platforms to compensate content creators, much like Spotify pays artists, restoring balance between those who produce content and those who use it (Business Insider).
Regardless, the future will likely be dominated by zero-click answers. The remaining space will be fought over by those able to deliver authentic value: lived experience, opinion, original research, and critical thought—things that are not “generable.”
Conclusion
The “good” news is that this latest web revolution could bring a partial return to origins: less SEO excess, less clickbait, more valuable content, and renewed attention to the user and their real needs.
Sources & References
- Digiday – Google AI Overviews and referral traffic drop
- New York Post – Traffic collapse of major news sites
- Wall Street Journal – News publishers “crushed” by AI
- SEMrush – The impact of AI search on SEO traffic
- Coalition Technologies – AI search and zero-click searches
- Wikipedia – Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
- Business Insider – Matthew Prince on AI compensation models
