ChatGPT Referrals Surge 25x, Google News Traffic Drops 26%

Since the launch of Google's AI Overviews in May 2024, news consumption habits have shifted dramatically, with zero-click searches rising from 56% to nearly 69% by May 2025, leading to a significant decline in organic traffic to news websites—from over 2.3 billion visits to under 1.7 billion. While referrals from ChatGPT to news publishers have surged 25-fold, from less than 1 million to over 25 million visits within a year, this growth remains insufficient to offset the massive loss in traffic caused by AI-powered search summaries providing direct answers without clicks. News-related prompts in ChatGPT grew by 212% during this period, with topics like stocks, finance, and sports dominating user queries. Reuters, NY Post, and Business Insider have benefited most from ChatGPT referrals, showing increases between 6.5% and 8.9%, whereas The New York Times, engaged in litigation against OpenAI, has seen a more modest 3.1% growth. This evolving AI-driven landscape challenges traditional news publishers' reliance on search engine optimization and referral traffic, forcing the industry to reconsider its revenue models and engagement strategies amid declining visibility and ad impressions. The overall trend signals a fundamental transformation in digital news discovery and consumption, with AI both providing new opportunities and posing existential threats to publishers' traditional business models.