Media executives expect search traffic to drop more than 40% over the next three years, as search engines continue to transform into AI-driven response engines, according to a new Reuters Institute report. That change pushes publisher traffic and accelerates the transition from classic SEO to AEO and GEO.
Why do we care. Google’s AI overview and chatbot-style search are changing the way people find information, often without a click. SEO visibility, attribution, and ROI models built on old playbooks are quickly broken.
What’s going on. Publishers expect search traffic to be about half. Survey respondents predicted a 43% drop in search engine traffic over three years, with a fifth of respondents expecting a loss of more than 75%.
- Google referrals are already falling. Chartbeat data cited in the report shows organic Google search traffic fell 33% globally from November 2024 to November 2025, and fell 38% in the US over the same period.
- AI overview is a big feature. Google’s AI overview appears in about 10% of US search results, with research showing zero click-through behavior when it appears, according to the report.
- The impact is uneven. Lifestyle and consumer content (eg, weather, TV guides, stars) seems to be featured more, while hard news questions have been largely restricted so far.
SEO to AEO and GEO. The Reuters Institute expects rapid growth in response engine optimization (AEO) and production engine optimization (GEO) as publishers and agencies adapt to AI-led communications.
- AEO and GEO services are set to improve. Agencies are reinventing the SEO playbooks for dialog boxes and overview boxes, with new requirements for how content is written, organized, and presented.
- Publishers are dialing back traditional SEO. Many survey respondents plan to reduce investment in traditional Google SEO and focus more on distribution through AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Between the lines. This is beyond standards. It’s about distribution within platforms not controlled by publishers.
- Chat transfers are increasing, but remain small. Traffic from ChatGPT is increasing rapidly, but the report calls it a rounding error compared to Google.
- Attribution is getting murkier. When AI agents summarize content and complete user tasks, it is not clear what counts as visits and how monetization works.
- Licensing becomes a complementary strategy. As the risk of referrals increases, publishers are turning to AI licensing, revenue sharing deals, and negotiated citations or prominence as another way to create value.
What you can watch. A new KPI stack is emerging. Metrics like response share, citation visibility, and product recall can be just as important as clicks.
- The content of the resource is subject to very high compression. Categories built for quick responses are very easy for AI programs to buy.
- A scaling arms race is coming. Expect new tools to differentiate human traffic from proxy usage and measure value beyond raw traffic.
Bottom line. Publishers are aiming for a world where search still matters, but clicks matter less. The message of the report is clear: if AI responses become an interface, AEO, GEO, and attribution strategy are no longer an option. They are a modern core search strategy.
Report. Journalism, media, and technology trends and predictions 2026
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