Don’t Blame AI: Is A Google Algorithm Update The Reason For Lost Search Traffic?

Ask around about AI’s effect on search results, and you’ll hear most publishers talk about what feels like drastic drops in traffic and visibility.

According to new research from the UK, that feeling is more than just anecdotal. But AI isn’t the main culprit to blame.

“Around six in ten of the UK’s biggest news websites have seen a drop in their visibility in Google search results in 2025 so far,” writes Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt, highlighting what appears to be the result of an algorithm update that Google implemented in June. “As well as the main Google search results pages and sub-sections like ‘featured snippets,’ core updates can affect how publishers are surfaced in the Google Discover feed, which is served to users on Google’s native mobile apps and within its Android operating system. Some major news publishers are now heavily reliant on Discover traffic. This is not reflected in visibility data, however.”

Of the 74 news sites analyzed by Press Gazette and Sistrix, 43 saw visibility drops, including 33 in the double-digit percentages. The Guardian had the highest search visibility score amongst those analyzed, but it saw a 10% drop between late December 2024 and October.

“Many of the big percentage drops were at sites with much smaller visibility scores, making any decline more pronounced,” writes Tobitt.