Overview

• Large news outlets report that organic search traffic has fallen by over 50% for HuffPost and Washington Post in three years, with the New York Times’ search referrals dropping to 36.5% this spring.
• TollBit data show that AI retrieval bot traffic jumped 49% in the first quarter of 2025 compared with late 2024 and that more than 26 million scrapes bypassed blockers in March alone.
• Only a few publishers have inked licensing deals with AI firms—The Washington Post with OpenAI and Time with Perplexity—while most AI bots still pull content without paying.
• Business Insider dismissed roughly 21% of its workforce to withstand uncontrollable traffic declines, and The Atlantic’s CEO predicts its Google-driven online visits could near zero.
• Publishers are adopting analytics platforms and restructuring their websites to serve AI-driven queries and develop new revenue models as human clicks dwindle.