Small publisher search traffic fell 60% over two years: Data
Google Search pageviews fell 34% year over year and Discover dropped 15%, as ChatGPT referrals rose 200% but remained under 1% of traffic.
Associate's
Danny Goodwin is Editorial Director of Search Engine Land & Search Marketing Expo - SMX. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022 as Senior Editor. In addition to reporting on the latest search marketing news, he manages Search Engine Land’s SME (Subject Matter Expert) program. He also helps program U.S. SMX events.
Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest developments and trends in search and digital marketing since 2007. He previously was Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal (from 2017 to 2022), managing editor of Momentology (from 2014-2016) and editor of Search Engine Watch (from 2007 to 2014). He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.
Google Search pageviews fell 34% year over year and Discover dropped 15%, as ChatGPT referrals rose 200% but remained under 1% of traffic.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 18, 2026 at 2:44 pm ETGoogle is bringing Personal Intelligence to U.S. users across AI Mode in Search, the Gemini app, and Gemini in Chrome.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 17, 2026 at 12:00 pm ETYahoo CEO Jim Lanzone warns that answer engines are starving publishers of clicks, and says creators deserve traffic from AI search.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 17, 2026 at 11:38 am ETThe new feed system will analyze what users read, like, and discuss to connect related topics and push insightful posts to wider audiences.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 16, 2026 at 10:38 am ETIn its dismissal bid, SerpApi argues reading public Google results isn't DMCA circumvention and warns Reddit is stretching platform power.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 13, 2026 at 1:14 pm ETMost brands chase AI visibility, but discovery isn’t the win. Pages are retrieved, evaluated, and often rejected before an answer is written.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 13, 2026 at 9:50 am ETPublishers are losing Google organic search traffic, but breaking news traffic jumped 103% and Discover clicks are surging.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 12, 2026 at 3:06 pm ETYahoo introduced MyScout, a personalized homepage for its Scout AI answer engine. It turns Yahoo’s AI search into a daily dashboard.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 11, 2026 at 12:53 pm ETGoogle Search Console now shows how much traffic your site gets from branded versus non-branded search queries.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 11, 2026 at 11:33 am ETJudge orders Perplexity to stop using a browser agent to reach password-protected Amazon accounts and delete collected data.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 10, 2026 at 11:58 am ETMobile apps drive most activity as ChatGPT, Gemini and others push AI discovery to 45 billion monthly sessions, new analysis finds.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 9, 2026 at 12:08 pm ETNearly one in five sources in Google’s AI answers now comes from Google itself, with many citations leading to more Google Search results.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 6, 2026 at 3:16 pm ETShoppers browse in ChatGPT but finish orders elsewhere, pushing OpenAI to rethink how AI drives retail sales.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 6, 2026 at 2:48 pm ETGoogle’s search chief says the line between web discovery and AI assistants is still unsettled as agents and new behaviors reshape the web.
Danny Goodwin | Mar 6, 2026 at 1:56 pm ETOpenAI reports the new usage milestone as paid subscriptions surge — the latest evidence that AI has become mainstream for daily use.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 27, 2026 at 11:31 am ETAI referrals drove stronger purchase intent, faster growth, lower average order value, and just 1.5% of organic revenue, new analysis finds.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 26, 2026 at 9:55 am ETNew SDK findings reveal why some pages never reach ranking, how pCTR predicts clicks, and why images and recency drive Discover traffic.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 25, 2026 at 10:50 am ETAnthropic explains how its bots handle AI training, live queries, and search results, and what opting out means for visibility.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 25, 2026 at 9:52 am ETSerpApi says Google is stretching the DMCA to protect ad revenue, not copyrights — casting the case as a fight over access to public SERPs.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 23, 2026 at 9:41 am ETText ad clicks surged year over year as classic organic fell across key verticals, with paid listings now taking up to one-third of clicks.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 18, 2026 at 4:01 pm ETChatGPT pulls most from early sections, favoring direct definitions, balanced tone, and dense entities, new research finds.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 18, 2026 at 12:47 pm ETPerplexity began testing sponsored placements in 2024. It’s abandoning them, saying labeled ads can erode credibility.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 18, 2026 at 9:16 am ETEarly data suggests chatbot referrals bring higher-intent guests as Airbnb bets on conversational search and deeper AI integration.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 17, 2026 at 2:54 pm ETBehind the AI interface, a staged system narrows tens of thousands of documents to a few, showing that visibility hinges on classic signals.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 17, 2026 at 12:52 pm ETCloudflare will auto-convert HTML to Markdown for AI crawlers, cutting tokens by 80% — but it may encourage cloaking.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 13, 2026 at 1:25 pm ETNew insights include total citations, average cited pages, grounding queries, page-level citation activity, and visibility trends over time.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 10, 2026 at 12:34 pm ETReddit is unifying search with its AI Q&A. It's goal: to become an end-to-end discovery engine where users finish, not just start, queries.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 9, 2026 at 1:56 pm ETIt's not about placement, it's about structure. Analysis of 2,300+ AI citations shows Google pulls answers from anywhere on a page.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 9, 2026 at 12:43 pm ETAI-powered search is driving record engagement and ad growth, as executives say new experiences are adding usage, not replacing queries.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 5, 2026 at 10:02 am ETAnthropic argues ads inside AI chats would erode trust, warp incentives, and clash with how people actually use assistants like Claude.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 4, 2026 at 10:53 am ETThe fight focuses on default search deals that critics say lock out competitors and limit choice for users, advertisers, and rival companies.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 4, 2026 at 10:08 am ETSaaS brands saw 30–50% visibility drops after heavy use of self-ranked 'best' pages, possibly signaling stricter Google review trust signals.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 4, 2026 at 9:28 am ETLinkedIn says Google’s AI Overviews cut non-brand B2B awareness traffic, forcing a rethink of how discovery works.
Danny Goodwin | Feb 3, 2026 at 10:41 am ETData shows AI assistants recommend only 1% to 11% of locations, revealing a massive gap between Google rankings and AI visibility.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 28, 2026 at 3:27 pm ETAI recommendations vary widely, even when prompts are identical. New data shows intent is consistent, but position tracking is mostly noise.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 28, 2026 at 11:20 am ETDatos data signals a tougher discovery era as AI cuts repeat searches, concentrates traffic, and leaves publishers with fewer opportunities.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 28, 2026 at 10:00 am ETGoogle signals search’s next phase: small multimodal models on devices infer intent from behavior before a query is ever typed.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 26, 2026 at 11:32 am ETElizabeth Reid’s affidavit warns that court-ordered data sharing would expose Google's IP, invite spam abuse, and put user privacy at risk.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 22, 2026 at 3:23 pm ETConsulting hours become donations as a well-known SEO turns outrage over ICE raids into rapid financial support for impacted families.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 21, 2026 at 1:25 pm ETGoogle's John Mueller confirms that when a URL appears in an AI Overview and as a blue link on the SERP, it won't count as two impressions.
Danny Goodwin | Jan 21, 2026 at 11:59 am ET