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Google still sends 33,000 clicks per second to publishers. But AI Overviews have killed commodity content. Barry Adams, Steven Wilson-Beales, and Harry Clarkson-Bennett on what works now.
The traffic decline is real, but the opportunity hasn't disappeared, it's shifted toward what publishers do well and away from commodity content that AI can fully answer in-situ.
That was the consensus from a panel of three of the most recognised names in news SEO: Barry Adams, Steven Wilson-Beales, and Harry Clarkson-Bennett in a panel moderated by Glide Publishing Platform's Rich Fairbairn, with a no-punches-pulled assessment of the state of traffic today, and where opportunities now lie.
With a focus on news sites, younger audiences, and how to optimise for audio, their Q&A session covered a wide ranging set of questions from attendees.
Polemic Digital's Barry Adams opened with a research-driven picture of recent traffic stats and habits, before the floor was opened to the audience in this Q&A styled session, where the panelists received wide-ranging questions including reaching younger audiences, the volatility of Google Discover, and how to optimise news sites for audio. One theme from the session overall is that Google's AI Overviews have accelerated a trend of Google downgrading "commodity knowledge" - filler content and click-chasing.
But encouragingly, while traffic is down, the opportunity has narrowed not disappeared - and is becoming more geared towards the very things that publishers do well.
Google's 5 trillion annual searches, filtered down:
5T searches per year → 32% result in any click → ⅔ of those go to the open web → 1T+ clicks to publishers per year = 33,000 clicks per second still flowing to the open web.
Source: SparkToro / Similarweb, June 2026
Google Discover is volatile - some publishers lost millions of visits overnight. Treat it as top-of-funnel acquisition, not a revenue line. Convert that traffic into first-party relationships as a priority.
The general opinion for now is that AI citations are mostly not worth chasing for content businesses. Those platforms keep users on-platform and send trivial numbers of visits to cited sources. Good SEO gets you 95% of the way there anyway.
Publishers producing fewer, better articles are seeing more conversions to subscribers. The first article a visitor lands on needs to be so good it converts, because you may only get one shot.
YouTube is more visible in Google than ever. Podcasts and video remain massively under-optimised by most publishers, and a significant growth area for those willing to invest.
Publishers need to market themselves, understand their value proposition, and communicate it. What others say about you matters more than what you say about yourself. Marketing has been a dirty word in publishing for a llong time. That era is over.
"If you've been chasing traffic without investing in retention, loyalty, or subscriptions, you're exposed. If you have - you're probably going to be fine."
"When you prompt ChatGPT, multiple Google searches happen in the background to retrieve top-ranked pages. That's just SEO. Anyone selling AI visibility as a new science is selling snake oil."
"People magazine started publishing fewer articles while making them better. The result: more subscribers, not fewer."
"Local news is holding up. Google sees no value in generating an AI Overview for a local car accident - and traffic there is actually growing slightly."
"Design your own Preferred Sources call-to-action. Don't use Google's default button. Place it mid-article. Uptake is low - but those readers are your most loyal."
"Younger generations trust AI now, but behaviour changes as people age. The college generation uses AI heavily - and then uses it less once they enter the workplace."
"Marketing has been a dirty word in publishing for a long time. Publishers need to market themselves now - not just chase traffic. Understand the value proposition and communicate it."
More from Glide Live: London 2026
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