Breaking News Thrives as AI Overviews Cut Publisher Traffic by 42%

A large-scale analysis by Define Media Group across the top 15 national and local news brands found that breaking news traffic is up 103% across all Google Surfaces since November 2024, while evergreen content is down roughly 40%. Google AI Overviews have caused organic search traffic to news publishers to decline 42% compared to pre-AIO baseline, with Google Web Search's share of traffic to news publishers falling from 51.1% to 27.4% between 2023 and Q4 2025.