Google's AI search upended online publishing
Publishers spent years tuning their pages to rank on Google in a largely reciprocal deal for readers, The Verge wrote in its weekly Stepback newsletter.
Google's changes to search, built around AI-generated answers, have upended online publishing, The Verge argued in the October 25 edition of The Stepback, its weekly newsletter on one major tech story.
The piece frames the shift as a break in one of the web's oldest business relationships. Digital publishers have relied on Google for a very long time, The Verge wrote, and many outlets spent time and money optimizing their pages to appear at the top of the search engine's results.
The goal was to get readers to click on articles or to discover a website for the first time. For years, according to the newsletter, the relationship between Google and publishers was largely reciprocal.
Google began showing AI Overviews, generated summaries placed above the traditional list of links, to users in the US in May 2024. It later expanded the feature to more countries and added AI Mode, a conversational search tab that answers questions directly.