Search traffic is gone: Caught between doomsday and optimism

Rarely have I heard such a loud and wide-ranging chorus of opinions from within our industry as in response to the (not just mine) statement: „Search Traffic? Das war’s dann wohl”. One thing’s for sure: everyone’s talking about it. And many with worried faces.

Let’s start with the optimists. At the beBeta conference in Berlin, a senior executive from a publisher that explicitly relies on reach-based advertising confronted me with this thought: If Google’s new “AI Overviews” reduce the number of users clicking through to websites (because many are satisfied with the AI answer right at the top of the results), overall internet reach will decrease — meaning fewer ad impressions. So logically, ad prices should go up. Well then.

On stage at beBeta, however, lawyer Thomas Höppner painted a much darker picture. He argued that even Google Discover will soon be replaced by some kind of AI interface — and with that, another major source of traffic for many publishers could vanish. For some, Discover is already more important than classic search.

Speaking of Discover: I think it’s important to distinguish between traditional search and Discover in this discussion. In the U.S., many publishers are already operating under the assumption that search will soon stop being a viable traffic source. Ein Beispiel: “The Atlantic is operating on the assumption that search traffic will go to zero.”

In contrast, many — myself included — believe that Discover could still offer stable or even growing traffic over the next two to three years. What happens after that? Who knows. The most pragmatic comment I’ve heard was: “Why worry about tomorrow’s problems today?”

Those who seem most anxious right now are SEO experts working with publishers. Understandably so — if publishers start believing that SEO no longer matters because search is “dead,” it becomes a hard sell. My expectation: Discover optimization, still a low priority in many newsrooms, will become a major focus in the coming months and years. We’ll likely also see the rise of a new field: Large Language Model Optimization (LLMO).

Meanwhile, Google seems intent on gaslighting us:
"We’re seeing that users who click on the links in AI Overviews spend more time on the destination pages. So the quality of those clicks has improved," says Google’s Head of Search, Pandu Nayak, zitiert Medieninsider den Google-Suchmaschinenchef Pandu Nayak
Seriously?

For anyone trying to keep their sense of humor through all this, I recommend a piece by journalist and cartoonist Peter “Bulo” Böhling. “The real hellfire is just now reaching operational temperature!” schreibt er sarkastisch in Richtung Verlagschefs. He suggests they band together to negotiate more effectively with Google:
"So don’t mope around like a bunch of Höppners — form a power pack and go full herd mode!"
Okay then. But doesn’t Corint already exist?

Joachim Dreykluft is Head of Data & AI Strategies bei Upscore.