ChatGPT referrals to information websites are rising, however not sufficient to offset search declines
Referrals from ChatGPT to information publishers are rising, however not sufficient to counter the decline in clicks ensuing from customers more and more getting their information straight from AI or AI-powered search outcomes, in accordance with a report from digital market intelligence firm Similarweb.
For the reason that launch of Google’s AI Overviews in Might 2024, the agency discovered that the variety of information searches on the net that lead to no click-throughs to information web sites has grown from 56% to just about 69% as of Might 2025.
Not surprisingly, natural visitors has additionally declined, dropping from over 2.3 billion visits at its peak in mid-2024 to now underneath 1.7 billion.
In the meantime, news-related prompts in ChatGPT grew by 212% from January 2024 by way of Might 2025.
For information publishers, the speedy adoption of AI is altering the sport. Visibility in Google Search outcomes and good web optimization practices could now not ship the worth they did prior to now, as search rank isn’t translating into as a lot web site visitors as earlier than, the agency identified.
On the identical time, ChatGPT referrals to information publishers are rising.
From January by way of Might 2024, ChatGPT referrals to information websites have been slightly below 1 million, Similarweb says, however have grown to greater than 25 million in 2025 — a 25x improve.
After all, when the business is going through even huge declines in natural search visitors, this improve is hardly sufficient to make up for publishers’ losses.
The report additionally famous that some web sites are faring higher than others in the case of AI referrals.
Websites seeing essentially the most will increase in ChatGPT referral visitors embrace Reuters (up 8.9% year-over-year), NY Publish (up 7.1%), and Enterprise Insider (up 6.5%). In the meantime, The New York Instances, which is suing OpenAI over allegedly scraping its works with out permission, is seeing far fewer ChatGPT referrals. Although nonetheless within the prime 10 websites receiving ChatGPT referral visitors, it’s solely seen a 3.1% improve.
Subjects like shares, finance, and sports activities are presently accounting for almost all of those ChatGPT news-related prompts, however Similarweb’s report notes different subjects are seeing progress, too, like politics, the economic system, climate, and others.
This, the agency theorizes, could sign a transfer away from extra “reactive data” and towards deeper “issue-driven engagement” by way of AI.
Alongside the AI referrals progress, ChatGPT’s web site and app customers have additionally seen better adoption.
During the last six months, app customers have greater than doubled, whereas web site guests have been up 52%, Similarweb mentioned.
The agency is now providing a service for manufacturers and companies that permits them to trace how and the place their model reveals up in GenAI instruments like ChatGPT, and the way that compares to their competitors.
Options to the information publishers’ disaster are few and much between.
Below stress from information publishers as AI kills their visitors, Google not too long ago launched a service referred to as Offerwall that permits publishers utilizing Google Advert Supervisor to experiment with different technique of monetization past extra traffic-dependent choices, like adverts. With Offerwall, publishers can as a substitute attempt issues like micropayments or asking customers to join newsletters to entry their website’s content material, for instance. They will additionally customise the Offerwall screens with choices of their very own, Google mentioned.
Different websites are experimenting with paywalls or different technique of monetization. Many have since performed mass layoffs and even shut down their operations.
In a current interview with The NYT’s Onerous Fork podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to a query about AI’s impression on the job market by saying, “I do assume there will likely be areas the place some jobs go away, or possibly there will likely be some entire classes of jobs that go away. And any job that goes away, even when it’s good for society and the economic system as a complete, could be very painful — extraordinarily painful — in that second … there’s going to be actual ache right here in lots of circumstances.”