Reddit and major publishers consider blocking Google as AI search decimates web traffic

Reddit and major publishers consider blocking Google as AI search continues destroying web traffic

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. Ripple effect: Google's push to turn Search into an AI answer engine isn't pleasing a lot of people, not least the publishers it relies on for answers. Some could even decide that they'd rather disappear from Google entirely than continue handing over their data and losing traffic. Reddit, USA Today, Reuters, Politico, The Economist, and People Inc. are among the companies reconsidering how much access they should give Google as referral traffic continues to collapse, according to The Wall Street Journal. Reddit has discussed blocking Google from using its enormous collection of user posts for AI purposes. The two companies are currently negotiating a possible renewal of the licensing agreement they signed in 2024, which reportedly pays Reddit around $60 million per year. Reddit's deal saw Google receive a constantly updated source of human conversations to train its models, while Reddit gained tens of millions of dollars ahead of its IPO. But things look less appealing when Google's AI products use the scooped-up data to answer questions without sending users back to Reddit. Investors don't appear thrilled by the prospect of the relationship breaking down. Reddit shares fell as much as 5.8% in premarket trading following the WSJ report. This isn't just a Reddit problem, either. USA Today Co. is considering blocking Google's crawler if search referrals continue to decline. Semrush data shows that organic US Google traffic to the national USA Today website fell by almost half between June 2025 and June 2026. Politico declined 23%, CNN lost around 25%, and Business Insider's traffic plunged more than 85%. "It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough," said USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed. Google does have controls that allow publishers to limit how their content is crawled and used, but using them comes with a big caveat. Publishers can block content from being used to train Gemini through Google-Extended, but preventing it from appearing in AI Overviews brings the risk of losing visibility in conventional search as well. More extreme measures such as noindex would remove pages from Google entirely, while nosnippet can also hurt their presence in results. That problem is being addressed in the UK. Last month, the country's Competition and Markets Authority ordered Google to let publishers opt out of AI search features without sacrificing their place in traditional results. Google says it will test the controls in Britain before introducing them globally, though it has not provided a timeline. A Pew Research Center study last year found that users clicked traditional links in 15% of searches without an AI Overview, falling to just 8% when one appeared. Links inside Google's summaries received clicks in only 1% of searches. Google insists that its AI features still send billions of visits to websites every week and help publishers grow their audiences. The company has also started paying more than 200 publishers for AI access and allows users to select preferred news sources. But publishers are obviously questioning the logic of an arrangement in which their work trains the systems replacing their traffic. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has repeatedly warned that AI summaries are destroying the business model that supported the web, and bots now account for around 56% of internet traffic. Blocking Google entirely is about as extreme as things can get, but for some publishers, it's better than the alternative.

Reddit may cut Google off from its content over AI traffic

Reddit's stock tumbled 9% after a report that it may cut off Google's access to its content for AI. The reason is simple: Google's AI Overviews answer users on the results page, so fewer of them click through. Reddit, Politico, Reuters and others are now asking whether the search deal is still worth it. For twenty years, the deal between Google and the web was simple. Publishers let Google crawl their pages. Google sent readers back in return. That bargain is breaking. Reddit is the latest, and loudest, sign. Its shares fell about 9% on Wednesday after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company has discussed cutting off Google's access to its content for AI. The two signed a deal in 2024 that lets Google train its models on Reddit posts, worth a reported $60 million a year. That deal is now nearing its end, and Reddit is not sure it wants to renew on the old terms. The reason is traffic. Google's AI Overviews summarise answers at the top of the results page. Users read the summary and never click. Reddit sells ads against the visitors Google used to send, so fewer clicks means less money. Reddit executives reportedly want the next deal priced by usage, not a flat fee. A Reddit spokesperson struck a measured note. The company is negotiating "just like any business should, by focusing on doing what's best for Reddit," it told CNBC. "A lot has changed since those first deals were signed, but our goals are the same." Not just Reddit Reddit is not alone, and that is the bigger story. The Journal reported that USA Today, Reuters, Politico, The Economist and People Inc are all weighing how, or whether, to keep working with Google. The numbers explain the anger. Between June 2025 and June 2026, Google referral traffic fell 23% at Politico and about 25% at CNN. At Business Insider it dropped more than 85%. Some publishers are done asking politely. "It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough," USA Today's chief executive Mike Reed told Digiday. Independent research suggests click-through rates fall by a third to a half when an AI Overview appears. For a business that runs on referral traffic, that is not a rounding error. It is the rent. Reddit's awkward position Reddit sits in a strange spot. Its data is prized precisely because AI systems lean on it so heavily. Chief financial officer Drew Vollero calls Reddit the "most cited source" for large language models, with more than 25 billion posts. Chief executive Steve Huffman has described the platform's conversations as "like oil for the modern internet." That gives Reddit leverage. It also licenses its data to OpenAI, and its total content deals were worth $203 million at the time of its 2024 float. The business is booming, with first-quarter revenue up 69% year on year, and Reddit reports again on 30 July. But the same AI answers that make its data valuable are draining the traffic its ad business needs. Reddit is both supplier and casualty. Google's reply Google disputes the gloom. It says it still sends billions of clicks to the web each day, and that AI Overviews spread traffic across a wider range of sites. The blue links are not going away, insists Liz Reid, its head of search. "Search is not a useful product if the web is not a thriving product," she told Tech Brew, "and so I think we probably care about that more than any other company in the world." Publishers are less convinced. Google offers a tool to block AI training, but using it can also hurt a site's ranking in ordinary search. Britain's competition regulator has ordered Google to let publishers opt out without that penalty, a rule Google is testing there first. The old exchange of links for traffic is fraying. Some publishers are already charging AI crawlers or blocking them, and nobody has agreed what replaces it. Reddit just made that impossible to ignore.

Major Publishers Are Reportedly Considering a Drastic Step to Get Their Content Out of Google's AI Answers

Publishers are facing very tough choices when it comes to Google's AI, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. Facing a drought of search traffic, they're considering cutting off Google's access to their content in various ways. Some even seem to be considering the drastic step of completely cutting off Google's web crawlers completely. Anonymous sources told the Journal that Reddit "has discussed shutting off the technology giant's access to its content for AI use," to use the Journal's phrasing. This would represent a big change of heart, since Google pays Reddit $60 million per year to scrape its content for AI, per a deal Reddit signed in 2024. But it's a fairly sweeping report, and the Journal found that a large number of publishers are looking into cutting ties with Google in more serious ways, and many are pretty vocal about it: * The President of Reuters said, "We are certainly looking at the economic trade-offs between search and AI summaries." * Mike Reed, CEO of USA Today said "It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough." * Neil Vogel, CEO of People, Inc. said "Turning them off and blocking them entirely is 100% on the table." * Politico and the Economist are also weighing their options when it comes to Google's web crawlers. The journal puts the dilemma in these terms: "Publishers can turn off crawling specifically for training Google's AI models, but they generally must allow the bot to crawl for both AI query results and the traditional search function if they want their content featured in either." Drilling down a bit, according to BotDetector, this may not be totally necessary if the goal is to stay out of Google Overviews, and to not have your content used as AI training data. Blocking the Google-Extended feature of the bot is supposed to stop content from being used to train models like those in the Gemini family. To theoretically be blocked from Google's AI Overviews, BotDetector tells me you have to get a little more intense and use the "nosnippet" tag, which would have the potential to hurt search. But even that would be far less dramatic than, say, using the much more nuclear "noindex" tag. That one is used to block search indexing altogether. If a critical mass of publishers were seriously considering using that, it would be a major escalation. A spokesperson for Google told the Journal its AI sends "billions of clicks to the web every week," and added that they "highlight links to the web and help creators and publishers grow their audiences, and we offer clear controls for website owners to manage their content."

Reddit and other major publishers are considering blocking Google as AI Overviews continue to hurt their traffic

Google's push to turn Search into an AI answer engine is creating a serious problem for the publishers it depends on for content. Some of them are now openly considering blocking Google entirely. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Reddit, USA Today, Reuters, Politico, The Economist, and People Inc. are all reconsidering how much access they give Google as referral traffic continues to collapse. The core issue is Google's AI Overviews, which answer search queries directly on the results page, removing the need to click through to the source. Semrush data shows Google-driven organic traffic to USA Today's US site fell by nearly half between June 2025 and June 2026. Politico was down 23%, CNN lost around 25%, and Business Insider's traffic dropped more than 85%. "It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough," said USA Today CEO Mike Reed, who added that blocking Google entirely is on the table if the decline continues. USA Today is also already suing Google over an alleged ad-tech monopoly. Reddit signed a $60 million per year licensing deal with Google in 2024, giving the search giant access to its enormous archive for AI training. That deal is now up for renewal, and Reddit is reportedly weighing whether it still makes sense. CEO Steve Huffman has made clear he understands the leverage Reddit holds. "There is no artificial intelligence without actual intelligence, and that comes from Reddit," he told analysts on the company's Q1 earnings call. Executives are reportedly pushing for usage-based fees that scale as Reddit's content becomes more central to AI-generated search. Reddit shares fell nearly 9% following the WSJ report. Wells Fargo warned the company could lose up to $500 million in AI licensing revenue if it walks away from Google. Google currently bundles its web crawling for traditional search indexing and its AI training into the same systems. Publishers can opt out of having their content used for Gemini training through Google-Extended, but preventing content from appearing in AI Overviews risks losing visibility in conventional search results too. In June, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority ordered Google to let publishers opt out of AI search features without losing their place in traditional results. Google says it will test that approach in Britain before rolling it out globally, but has not given a timeline. Google, for its part, insists its AI features still send billions of clicks to the web every week and that it offers clear controls for publishers to manage their content. Publishers are increasingly questioning the logic of an arrangement in which their work trains the systems that are replacing their traffic.

Reddit, news outlets weigh cutting Google off as AI summaries kill traffic: report

Reddit and a growing number of news publishers are reportedly mulling whether to cut off Google's access to their sites as the Big Tech giant's controversial AI search summaries siphon web traffic. Reddit, which previously inked a $60 million per year deal which permitted Google to use its online message boards to train AI models, has grown disillusioned with the search giant's tactics and is debating whether the agreement is worth it, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. USA Today, Politico, Reuters and The Economist are also reconsidering their ties to Google over its use of AI-generated "overviews" - which are placed at the top of search results instead of links to outside outlets in what critics have called an existential threat to online publishers. "It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough," said USA Today CEO Mike Reed told the Journal. Google search traffic from US users to USA Today plummeted by nearly half over the 12 months ending in June 2026, according to data compiled by Semrush. Traffic plunged 23% for Politico and by more than 85% for Business Insider, the report found. USA Today - which is already suing Google for alleging operating a monopoly over digital advertising technology - is considering cutting off Google's access to its articles for AI training. That would also mean its articles would no longer appear in search results. Politico, which is owned by publishing giant Axel Springer, has discussed blocking Google and other bots from accessing its non-paywalled articles, according to the report. Reuters is also considering limits. "We are certainly looking at the economic trade-offs between search and AI summaries," Reuters President Paul Bascobert told the Journal. A Google spokesperson pushed back on the criticism, asserting that publishers are able to opt out of allowing their sites to be used for training its Gemini AI models without removing themselves from search. "Google's AI Search features send billions of clicks to the web every week, meeting people's evolving preferences for how they want to find information while driving significant traffic to websites," the spokesperson said. "Our AI features highlight links to the web and help creators and publishers grow their audiences, and we offer clear controls for website owners to manage their content." Meanwhile, Google has turned up the heat on news publishers. In June, The Information reported that the company was pitching news publishers on a pilot program to have their sites featured in AI Overviews - but only if they agreed to allow sweeping access to their content for AI training.