Overview

• An updated bot filter reclassified May–June spikes—much of it from evasive bots in Brazil—leading Wikimedia to restate March–August data and identify an 8% year-over-year decline in recent months.
• Wikimedia attributes the drop to generative AI answers in search and shifting habits toward social video platforms, which reduce direct clicks to Wikipedia.
• A Pew Research study reported click rates fall from 15% to 8% when Google’s AI Overviews appear, with about 1% of users opening cited sources and roughly one in five searches showing the feature.
• Other publishers report sharp losses and escalate pushback, including DMG Media’s 89% CTR drop claim and a Penske Media lawsuit, while Google says overall outbound traffic remains stable.
• In response, Wikimedia is tightening crawler enforcement, developing an attribution framework, and launching Reader Growth, Reader Experience, and Future Audiences efforts; it also paused AI page summaries after volunteer objections.