In other words, assume publications such as The New Yorker and Wired will, one day soon, no longer derive visitors from Google Search results. He’s not alone in forecasting a massive change in the flow of internet traffic. Some 37% of internet users now start their searches via LLM instead of Google Search, according to a January study from Search Engine Land. Traffic from AI chatbot referrals accounts for just 1% of total web traffic, according to a July AEO/GEO Benchmark report from AI search platform Conductor. The digital publishing industry’s ad revenue has shrunk by billions of dollars as search traffic dwindles, according to estimates.