The Traffic Crash: How AI Search Is Rewriting the Web’s Economy
Since the start of 2025, a silent collapse has been sweeping across the web. Paid traffic once the foundation of online visibility is falling sharply, with some sectors seeing declines of up to 70%. The reason isn’t a mysterious algorithm update. It’s the rise of AI-powered search and summaries.
A New Search Reality: Answers Without Visits
AI search tools, from Google’s AI Overviews to Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, and other assistants, now deliver instant answers and summaries directly in the search results. Users no longer need to click through to the source.
This has created what analysts call the “zero-click web.”
According to Forbes’ April 2025 report, “The 60% Problem — How AI Search Is Draining Your Traffic,” roughly 60% of all queries now end without a click. The search experience has shifted from discovery to delivery — and the web’s long-standing attention economy is being rewritten.
The Numbers: A Widespread Drop
Across informational and content-rich sites, traffic declines of 30–60% are becoming the norm. The trend is most severe for sites that rely on educational, reference, or explanatory queries — precisely the content most easily summarized by AI.
| Site Type | Traffic Drop % (2025) | AI Referral Growth |
|---|---|---|
| Education / Info | 30–70% | Up to 1% of traffic |
| Legal Content | 52% | 15% bots/agents |
| News / Media | 15–64% | Growing but still small |
In one example reported by The Chancery Lane Project (Aug 2025), a legal content platform saw its visits fall 52% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 while AI bot and agent activity surged 15%, suggesting the information is still being accessed, just not by humans.
Why It’s Happening: The Rise of the “Zero-Click” Economy
Traditional search engines were built around links and traffic; AI search is built around answers.
The introduction of integrated summaries and conversational responses means that users get what they need without ever visiting a page.
The result:
Zero-click searches now dominate, accounting for roughly 60% of queries.
AI referrals — clicks from within AI assistants — are rising fast but still represent <1% of total traffic.
Bot traffic from AI models has spiked, often comprising 10–15% of total visits on affected sites.
As Whistler Billboards (May 2025) put it, “The Impact of Google’s AI Overviews on Website Traffic” has been “a structural change, not a seasonal dip.”
Sector Differences: Who’s Losing the Most
The losses are uneven.
Educational and knowledge platforms like Chegg are among the hardest hit, as AI tools increasingly summarize textbook-style queries.
Media publishers face declining click-throughs from news-related searches, especially those linked to “what is…” or “explained” content.
Professional knowledge sectors — such as legal and health — are seeing steep declines despite high-quality, authoritative content.
By contrast, transactional or brand-driven searches (where users intend to buy or compare) have been more resilient, as AI tools still refer users to retail or source sites for completion.
What’s Next: AI Referrals Rising, But Not Fast Enough
Even as AI referrals grow, they’re not yet replacing what’s been lost. Forge Apollo (July 2025) found that AI-driven referrals are increasing month-over-month by double digits, but they remain a rounding error compared to traditional organic search.
This gap creates a fundamental challenge for businesses built on SEO and SEM: how to measure demand when clicks disappear.
Beyond Traffic: The Demand Signal Still Exists
While web visits decline, interest hasn’t vanished — it’s simply no longer measured by clicks alone.
As Bigtop Multimedia (July 2025) noted, “AI doesn’t erase curiosity; it just intermediates it.”
That’s where new measurement models — like search interest analysis — become crucial. Instead of counting traffic, they measure how people are searching, how fast interest is moving, and where attention is spreading.
Understanding demand in this new landscape means looking at signals, not sessions.