The Stable Patient

Google's Official Blog: AI is driving more queries and higher quality clicks

Google's official blog offered a masterclass in corporate reassurance today. The post argued that their new AI Overviews, the summarized answers that now sit atop search results, aren't harming publishers. On the contrary, they are driving more engagement and "higher quality" clicks. As someone who has spent years navigating the complex world of search marketing, I've learned to read these pronouncements with a familiar mix of belief and profound skepticism.

The numbers are likely true, in the sterile, specific way corporate numbers always are. I have no doubt that some metrics are stable, that some clicks are of "higher quality." But I also know that many publishers, the lifeblood of the open web, are seeing their traffic begin to dry up. Google’s narrative is not a lie, but it’s a truth told from 30,000 feet, obscuring the view of the ground.

But here is a more difficult truth: the ecosystem AI is disrupting was already sick. The open web wasn't a flourishing paradise before this. It was a landscape of publishers locked in a desperate, losing battle for survival, plastering every spare pixel with ads, chasing page views with increasingly hollow content, and still going broke. The patient was ill long before this new diagnosis.

Maybe this is the shock to the system we needed. The old model of monetizing the web - built on a fragile foundation of ad impressions and click-through rates - is dying. The arrival of AI Overviews hastens the inevitable. The opportunity here is to invent a better way. Maybe that means charging AI bots for access to our content. Maybe it’s a new model of monetization we haven't even conceived of yet.