AI Summaries Arrive in Google Discover: Another Blow to Publishers’ Traffic

Google has begun adding AI-powered summaries to Google Discover, the main news feed in its search app for iOS and Android. Users will now see multiple publisher logos and an AI summary generated based on these sources, instead of just a news headline. This change poses a new threat to publishers who are concerned about losing traffic from Google.

Note: This news does not concern us, why? Google doesn’t stop by 🙂 Come Google, please come to us even if you summarize us with artificial intelligence:)

AI Summaries Arrive in Discover

For now, these summaries, which are being rolled out in the U.S., also come with a warning: “may be inaccurate.” Although the feature doesn’t yet appear on every news item, it is expected to become more widespread over time. Google states that this is not a test but an official launch. The company notes that it is particularly focusing on trending lifestyle topics such as sports and entertainment.

Google argues that this new feature will help users decide more easily which news they want to read. However, from a publisher’s perspective, users merely glancing at summaries without directly visiting news websites increases the risk of reduced traffic and advertising revenue.

Traffic Declining

In addition to AI summaries, Google Discover is experimenting with other presentation formats. Some news items include bullet-point summaries below them, while other content is grouped with related news.

To support publishers, Google introduced a new system called Offerwall in recent months. This feature allows content creators to enable users to access content by filling out surveys, subscribing to newsletters, watching ads, or making micro-payments. However, for many media organizations, this step is seen as a late solution that cannot keep up with the pace of traffic decline.

According to Similarweb data, global search engine traffic decreased by 15% year-over-year as of June 2025. Furthermore, the rate at which news searches are resolved without a click increased from 56% in May 2024 to 69% in May 2025. Organic traffic, during the same period, declined from 2.3 billion visits to below 1.7 billion. The shift of Google Discover, long an important traffic source for publishers, towards AI summaries could lead this channel to become a platform that provides progressively fewer clicks.

Information Deficiency

Of course, this shouldn’t be viewed solely through the lens of “clicks” and “revenue.” While AI summaries fundamentally change how we access information, they also carry significant risks. Automatically generated content can over-simplify complex events, detach them from their context, or mislead readers due to incomplete or superficial reporting. Moreover, the information in these summaries may not fully reflect the content of the original news. This brings with it the risk of misleading the public with stripped-down, truncated, and context-missing information, especially on sensitive topics. The possibility of misunderstanding or forming incorrect opinions can directly affect information-based decision-making processes.

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