Publisher traffic loss from AI search engines
AI search engines have caused significant traffic losses for publishers by scraping and training on their content without permission or payment. Research shows small publishers lost 60% of search traffic, medium publishers 47%, and large publishers 22% between December 2024 and December 2025.
What happened
Artificial intelligence has had a devastating impact on publisher traffic as AI companies scrape, train, and repurpose publishers' stories, typically without permission or payment.
New research from Chartbeat published in March 2026 shows that small publishers lost 60 percent of their search traffic between December 2024 to December 2025, medium publishers lost 47 percent, and large publishers lost 22 percent.
Reported impact
Publishers across all sizes experienced significant traffic declines attributed to AI search engines.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.