Publishers consider blocking Google as AI search erodes traffic

USA Today, Reddit, and Reuters among outlets weighing major steps

Reddit, the online message board whose content powers a significant portion of Google search results, has discussed shutting off the technology giant’s access to its content for AI use, according to people familiar with the matter. The company struck a $60 million-a-year deal with Google in 2024 that allowed its material to be used for AI training, but executives are now reassessing the value of continuing to feed content to the search engine as the deal nears its end.

“This is existential for some categories of publishers,” said David Buttle, CEO of media consulting firm DJB Strategies. “They are looking at more radical things.”

USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed said his company is willing to turn off Google’s access if the downward trend in search activity continues. The national publication’s organic Google search traffic from U.S. users fell by nearly half between June 2025 and June 2026, according to search measurement firm Semrush. “It’s time to take a stand and say enough is enough,” Reed said. USA Today has a lawsuit pending against Google alleging it holds a monopoly in ad tech.

Google search traffic from U.S. users fell by 23% for Politico’s website, about 25% for CNN, and more than 85% for Business Insider over the same period, according to Semrush data cited by the Journal. Employees at Politico have discussed adding a registration wall that requires humans to log in to view content, according to people familiar with the matter.

Reuters President Paul Bascobert said the news agency is weighing whether to block Google’s bot for its consumer-facing product. “We are certainly looking at the economic trade-offs between search and AI summaries,” Bascobert said.

The Economist has been actively discussing the possibility of opting out of AI search features since a U.K. regulatory ruling in June, according to Josh Muncke, the publication’s vice president of generative AI. “Google is a powerful force to be reckoned with,” Muncke said. “Traffic can be choppy and declining, but traffic is still traffic.”

People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel said turning off Google’s crawler entirely is “100% on the table.” Google contributed just 25% of the company’s traffic in the first quarter of this year, down from more than half two years ago.

Google said its AI search features “send billions of clicks to the web every week” and that it offers clear controls for website owners to manage their content. The company announced in June it would comply with a U.K. regulatory authority ruling that requires it to allow publishers to determine whether to participate in AI features without sacrificing their presence in traditional search results. Google said it would test the features in the U.K. before rolling them out globally.

The growing discussion is unfolding against a backdrop in which bots now make up more than half of all web traffic, according to Cloudflare. Some publishers are finding ways to adapt. Time is creating text-based ads that are invisible to human readers but designed to be picked up by AI crawlers, hoping that Google’s AI Overviews will reference the material.

“There are now two audiences,” said Mark Howard, Time’s chief operating officer. “We’re thinking about, How do we superserve the humans when they do come, and how do we think about the bots as a secondary audience?”