AI news
French news sites lost nearly 23% of traffic in one year
In brief
According to an analysis by The Media Leader based on ACPM data, 40 French news brands lost 22.9% of their visits in one year. The drop follows the rollout of Google's AI summaries, though no direct causal link has been established.
What it changes for an SME
For an SME that relies on organic search traffic (blog, lead generation, e-commerce), this is a wake-up call: if AI answers questions directly in search results, visitors can vanish even with solid SEO. The impact on business websites is not yet proven, but the direction of travel is enough to justify close monitoring now. A growing share of visibility may increasingly lie outside the traditional click.
What you can do
- Review your organic traffic trend in Google Search Console or your analytics tool over the last 12 months, not just the past month.
- Check which pages actually drive your conversions (quotes, contacts, sales) rather than informational traffic.
- Diversify acquisition channels deliberately - newsletters, LinkedIn, existing customers - so you are less exposed to the evolving search results page.
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