'Google Zero' Arrives: Business Insider Down 85% in Organic Google Traffic, Reddit Threatens to Cut Off Google's AI Access
Nieman Journalism Lab·high signal
Semrush data covering June 2025 to June 2026 shows US organic Google search traffic collapsing across major publishers — Business Insider off more than 85%, USA Today down nearly half — with some now weighing opting out of Google entirely. Pew's study of roughly 68,000 queries found click-through to organic results falls by nearly half when an AI Overview appears, pinning the cause on Google's own zero-click answers rather than chatbot competition. Reddit, whose content Google licenses for about $60M a year, is threatening to block AI training access as the two renegotiate.