{"summary":"News sites are losing roughly a third of their Google search traffic as AI Overviews and answer engines answer queries without a click: Google search referrals fell 33% globally and 38% in the US between Nov 2024 and Nov 2025 (Chartbeat), visits to the top 50 US news sites are down 37% from the July 2024 peak (Press Gazette/Similarweb), and evergreen tech publishers lost 55% or more. AI chatbots replace little of it: generative AI is about 0.4% of news-site visits.","benchmarks":[{"metric":"Google search referrals to news sites, Nov 2024 to Nov 2025","change_pct":-33,"us_change_pct":-38,"source":"Chartbeat data (797 sites) in the Reuters Institute 'Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026' report, Jan 2026"},{"metric":"Search traffic publishers expect to lose over the next three years","change_pct":-43,"source":"Reuters Institute Trends and Predictions 2026, survey of 280 digital news leaders in 51 countries, Jan 2026"},{"metric":"Total visits to the current top 50 US news sites, July 2024 peak to July 2026","change_pct":-37,"detail":"4.9 billion to 3.1 billion monthly visits; organic search to these sites down 42%; top 10 sites down 32% (15% year on year).","source":"Press Gazette analysis of Similarweb data, Aug 2026"},{"metric":"US Google traffic to 10 tech and media outlets, early 2024 peak to January 2026","change_pct":-55,"detail":"112 million to just under 50 million monthly visits; Digital Trends -97%, The Verge, HowToGeek and ZDNet more than -85%, Wired -62%, Mashable -30%.","source":"Growtika analysis of Ahrefs data, early 2026"}],"ai_referrals":{"summary":"AI chatbots send little traffic back: generative AI was 0.4% of visits to the top 50 US news sites (NYT 0.2%, The Hill 1.1%, Reuters 1.7%), and ChatGPT 0.02% of all publisher referrals vs 7.3% from Google Search.","sources":["Press Gazette / Similarweb, Aug 2026","Reuters Institute Trends and Predictions 2026 (Chartbeat), Jan 2026"]},"docs":"https://www.oasy.ai/api/newstraffic/90nqhq8j","usage":"https://www.oasy.ai/api/newstraffic/90nqhq8j","parameters":{"site":"Optional: a site with published figures, e.g. cnn, nytimes, usatoday, apnews, people, bbc, substack, digitaltrends, theverge, wired, zdnet, howtogeek, mashable.","monthly_visits":"Optional: your site's monthly visits, to estimate visits lost.","search_share":"Optional with monthly_visits: share of visits from search, 0-1 or a percentage (default 0.30, the top-50 US news average).","type":"Optional with monthly_visits: news (default) or evergreen (how-tos, explainers, tech reviews, which lost far more)."}}