By Michael Savage
Publication Date: 2026-01-12 06:00:00
Media companies expect web traffic to their sites from online searches to decline sharply over the next three years as AI summaries and chatbots change the way consumers use the internet.
An overwhelming majority also plan to encourage their journalists to behave more like YouTube and TikTok content creators this year, as short-form video and audio content continues to boom.
The findings come from a new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, which included the views of 280 media leaders from 51 countries. It has been found that media managers around the world fear that search engine recommendations will decline by 43% within three years.
Search traffic to news sites worldwide has already fallen by a third in a year, thanks to the proliferation of AI digests and chatbots, as well as changes to the search algorithms that have been the lifeblood of some media companies since the advent of the Internet.
Google searches are down 33% worldwide, according to new data for more than 2,500 news sites…
