Small Business Owners Reel as Google AI Destroys Google Search

by Tyler Durden

Monday, Apr 07, 2025 – 02:25 PM

In March 2024, Morgan McBride stood in her half-renovated kitchen posing for a photo shoot. The images were for a new Google ad campaign, a celebration of the ways the search engine had empowered her family’s do-it-yourself home improvement site, Charleston Crafted, to flourish. Just weeks later, she said, traffic from Google dropped more than 70%.

McBride had weathered Google algorithm changes before. But this time, the recovery never came. She suspects that more of her readers are getting advice from Google’s AI-generated summaries, which now appear prominently atop many search results  – sometimes giving renovation tips that she says are incorrect or potentially unsafe. “You can’t just sit around waiting for things to turn around,” she said. Advertising revenue on her site has since dropped by 65%, costing her tens of thousands of dollars.

These summaries often draw directly from websites – like Charleston Crafted – but don’t send users to them, according to a report by Bloomberg. That’s left publishers like Gisele Navarro, managing editor of HouseFresh, watching as her content appears in summaries without translating into clicks or revenue. Internal analytics, which she shared with Bloomberg, show a growing share of impressions without traffic.

Across the web, independent publishers are reporting similar experiences. The rise of Google’s AI Overviews – which deliver synthesized answers from across the internet – along with a series of search algorithm changes, has upended the traffic patterns many small websites once relied on. Bloomberg, which conducted interviews with 25 publishers and digital experts, found widespread concern that Google’s shifting strategy is unraveling a symbiotic relationship that has powered the internet for years: websites provide helpful content, and Google delivers the audience.

Now, many creators say they’re being cut out of the equation entirely.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/betrayed-thats-word-small-business-owners-reel-google-ai-destroys-google-search