this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
225 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

82884 readers
3916 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
225
Google Search referrals to the web have plummeted, AI links are 'less than 1%' of traffic (9to5google.com)
submitted 2 days ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
129 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Data gathered by Chartbeat and shared by Axios reveals that, over the past year, Google Search traffic to publishers across the broader web have fallen drastically, and proportionally more so for smaller websites. Referral traffic from Google apparently fell by 60% for “small publishers,” while “medium publishers” (those with between 10,000-100,000 daily pageviews) saw a drop of 47%. “Large publishers,” meanwhile, saw a 22% drop. That last category would be any site getting over 100,000 daily pageviews.

It’s not just Google Search either. While Search traffic dropped by 34%, traffic from Google Discover has also fallen by 15% over the past year, the report found.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago (8 children)

The first thing I do when searching google is to scroll past that AI shit they put at the top and look for a valid link to a valid website.

[–] dkppunk@piefed.social 1 points 15 hours ago

I changed all of my default search engines to https://noai.duckduckgo.com/ and internet searches have been much better

[–] imjustmsk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Do yourself a favor and don't use Google at all

Here are alternatives

  1. Brave Search or DuckDuckGo They do have similar AI features but you can disable them.
  2. Or, Just use StartPage, It's basically shows you Google results but without any if Google's bloat nor their tracking.

edit; stupif typ0

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

DDG lets you just turn off the AI crap.

[–] Rooster326@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The only thing I miss moving everything to DDG is that it doesn't have reviews for local businesses.

[–] coaxil@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

For local specific search that DDG just misses like those reviews and open hours you can throw the ol shebang in your search, !g, and it will search in Google for you

[–] BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

I made that the default on my computer at home so I wouldn't get into the bad habit of using the AI response. It still shows up on the computer at work and I have to remind myself not to believe what it says.

[–] BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Unfortunately, most of the first page of results is often AI slop at this point...

[–] MadBigote@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Can i interest you in Kagi? Its a great web browser and AI is optional.

[–] Kkk2237pl@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

The first you should use other browser like ecosia or qwant

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

If you set your default browser search engine to this, it gives a much cleaner Google search result, without AI crap.

https://google.com/search?udm=14&q=%25s

I tried other searches like DDG and the like, but Google still gives the best results... If you bypass all their junk.