Top news sites suffer drastic drop in web traffic since Google added AI search with some plunging 40%

Visits to major US news websites have plummeted since Google rolled out its artificial intelligence search feature last year – with some plunging 40%, according to troubling new data.Of the top 50 news domains, 37 suffered year-over-year traffic declines after the launch of Google’s AI Overviews last May, according to SimilarWeb.The drastic dropoff comes despite headline-grabbing events that included the assassination attempt on Donald Trump last summer, his stunning election victory over Kamala Harris a few months later and the turmoil over the new president’s tariff policies.“The data absolutely shows the new AI products Google has announced are affecting news publishers’ traffic,” Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of News/Media Alliance, told The Post on Tuesday.“On top of all the SEO changes that have decreased traffic recently in traditional search, this is certain to negatively impact our ability to invest in quality journalism,” added Coffey, whose nonprofit trade association represents more than 2,200 news organizations.Forbes and HuffPost were the hardest hit, each losing 40% of their traffic, while DailyMail.com plunged 32% and CNN.com fell 28%, according to SimilarWeb.

The Post and sister publication Wall Street Journal suffered declines of 27% and 17%, respectively, the data showed.Fox News.com fell 24%.Fox News parent Fox Corp.

and The Post parent News Corp share common ownership.ComScore, which uses a different methodology from SimilarWeb to track traffic, found that NYPost Network — which includes nypost.com and affiliated properties such as Decider and Page Six — drew 433 million page views in June 2024 before falling to 381 million for May 2025, a loss of 12%.https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/24029631Meanwhile, WSJ.com — part of News Corp-owned Dow Jones — and Fox News.com both posted slight increases over the same time frame, one of the few publications to gain traffic, according to ComScore.Left-leaning rival...