Ziff Davis has put the clearest number yet on what Google's AI answers are doing to publishers. Chief executive Vivek Shah told analysts on Friday that organic referrals from Google Search to the company's sites fell about 37% in the third quarter, after a 23% drop a year earlier, taking the two-year decline past 50%. In the same quarter, Ziff Davis content was cited about 2.7 billion times inside AI Overviews and AI Mode — nearly ten times the clicks those sites received from Google Search. Shah said the company is not planning on a search recovery.
The numbers behind the drop
The traffic loss showed up in the money. Ziff Davis reported third-quarter revenue of $289.3 million, down 5.6% from a year earlier, while advertising and performance marketing revenue fell 7.7% to $186 million. Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation came in at $82.2 million, down 16% year on year.
Technology and shopping, the part of the business most exposed to search, felt it hardest — though Shah said its revenue decline has narrowed for three straight quarters, from 18% late last year to just under 4%. Gaming and entertainment revenue slipped about 2%, while health and wellness fell 9.5% as professional advertising at MedPage Today weakened.
2.7 billion citations, a fraction of the clicks
The most telling figure is one Google recently started sharing. Search Console now reports 'AI impressions': how often a link to a page appears inside a generative AI feature. For Ziff Davis, that meant about 2.7 billion appearances in AI Overviews and AI Mode in the quarter — close to ten times the clicks its sites received from Google Search.
Shah framed the gap as proof of value, not only loss: the citations show how much users rely on Ziff Davis content, even as referrals collapse. The company says it will keep pushing for payment for that value, through licensing deals and its copyright case against OpenAI.
A bad week for publishers
Ziff Davis was not alone. In the same week, USA TODAY Co. announced a $100 million cost-cutting programme after search-referred advertising fell, with indirect digital advertising down 32%. Teads wrote off the last of its goodwill after AI summaries cut publisher page views by 20% to 60%, and Yelp reported its seventh straight quarter of falling ad clicks.
Our Read
This is the first time a publisher has put numbers on the AI Overview gap — and the numbers are worse than the estimates. Earlier studies put the click loss at about 40% when an AI Overview appears. Ziff Davis is describing something larger: a two-year collapse in referrals while its content is shown billions of times without a visit.
The contrast with Google's quarter is the point. Alphabet reported search revenue up 12% and query growth at its fastest in five years, while the publishers supplying the answers count their losses. Google is monetising the answer; the publisher is not. That is why Ziff Davis is betting on licensing, not traffic, and why it expects referrals to keep falling.
Why It Matters
For publishers, the trade is now explicit: visibility inside AI answers is rising while the traffic that paid for the content falls. If licensing does not replace referrals, the model that funds tech, gaming and health coverage breaks. For Google, the risk is legal: a German court has already held it liable for statements in AI Overviews.
Background
Ziff Davis owns CNET, IGN, PCMag, Mashable and more than 40 other sites, and it has sued OpenAI over the use of its content. Publishers have been pressing Google on AI search all year, from court challenges to a Turkish competition investigation into whether AI Overviews and AI Mode harm news publishers.
Source: earnings call transcript and PPC Land's report
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