TAIPEI (TVBS News) — Google's AI Overview feature has dealt a crushing blow to the news industry, triggering traffic declines of up to 40 percent for major news websites since its launch last year. This alarming data was presented at the Asian Journalism Forum (2025亞洲新聞專業論壇) in Taipei. Media executives and journalists who gathered at the forum on Saturday (July 5) voiced mounting alarm over this technology's profound reshaping of the relationship between content creators and search platforms, a shift they warn could imperil the very survival of quality journalism.
"We are not anymore the default source of information for our audiences," said Jaermark Tordecilla, a media advisor from the Philippines who traveled to Taiwan for the forum organized by the Foundation for Excellent Journalism Award (財團法人卓越新聞獎基金會) and the The Graduate Institute of Journalism National Taiwan University (台灣大學新聞研究所). "Back in the day, if you wanted to know about the news, you had to watch the television newscast or you had to buy a newspaper. That's not what is happening anymore."
Wong Amarinthewa, editor at 101.World in Thailand, identified Google's AI features as the primary culprit behind the traffic collapse. "Nowadays, when we search something on Google, Google always recommends the answer generated by AI immediately at the top. So the audience has no need to click to our website," Wong explained during a panel discussion focused on digital disruption in news consumption.
The crisis in Taiwan mirrors troubling global trends documented by digital intelligence firm SimilarWeb, which found that 37 of the top 50 news domains worldwide suffered significant year-over-year traffic declines after Google launched its AI Overviews feature in May 2024. This widespread impact has sent shockwaves through newsrooms across continents, prompting urgent discussions about journalism's digital future.
The severity of the situation becomes clearer through additional SimilarWeb data showing that "zero-click searches" have surged dramatically. The percentage of web searches related to news that end without users clicking through to any news site jumped to 69 percent in May 2025 from 56 percent for the same month last year, representing millions of lost reader opportunities for publishers worldwide.
Jeongghwan Lee, CEO of Slow News in South Korea, articulated deeper concerns about the fundamental biases embedded in search algorithms. "Algorithms are not neutral. They decide what I see, what you see and what we want to see," Lee explained during his presentation. "Algorithms are designed to get clicks and create money. Source does not remove bias. Invisible Hand is still there."
With the very future of journalism hanging in the balance, news organizations across Asia and globally now confront the daunting challenge of developing innovative business models capable of coexisting with AI technology. Forum participants emphasized that survival will require fundamental rethinking of revenue streams while maintaining the trusted reporting and editorial standards that distinguish professional journalism from algorithm-generated content.
Google has vigorously defended its AI features against mounting criticism from the news industry. The tech giant maintains that these tools "enable people to ask even more questions, which creates new opportunities for content and businesses to be discovered." A company spokesperson insisted that Google continues to "send billions of clicks to websites every day," dismissing publishers' concerns as misplaced. ◼