Tech Publications Lost 58% of Google Traffic since 2024

Growtika. “Tech Publications Lost 58% of Google Traffic since 2024.” Growtika, Feb. 2026, growtika.com/blog/tech-media-collapse. 

This article presents original research tracking what’s happened to major tech publications’ Google search traffic over the past two years and the numbers are pretty crazy. Ten major tech publications lost a combined 65 million monthly organic visits since their peaks, a 58% decline overall. Some sites got hit way harder than others. Digital Trends dropped 97%, ZDNet fell 90%, and The Verge lost 85% of its search traffic. The article points to a few likely culprits: Google rolling out AI Overviews broadly starting in mid-2024, Reddit gaining ranking position for commercial keywords that historically belonged to these publications, and a growing number of users skipping Google entirely and going straight to ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity for research. Sites built around how-to guides and informational queries got hit the hardest, because those are exactly the types of questions Google’s AI Overviews now answer directly in search results without requiring a click. And it’s not just tech!! NerdWallet lost 73% of its traffic and Healthline lost 50%, suggesting that the pattern extends well beyond tech media.

This was just a crazy find when I was researching! I think I was drawn to it because it literally affects HOW we are researching. Working in a library has me thinking about information access constantly, and watching AI dismantle this ecosystem of trusted sites’ content is crazy to me. If the publications people used to turn to for reliable information are losing 85–97% of their traffic because AI is just… answering the questions for them, that raises a huge question about where people are getting their information now, and how good that information actually is. And honestly, the same threat applies to libraries. AI isn’t just affecting search traffic for tech websites, it’s making people feel like they don’t need to go anywhere for information anymore, whether that’s a website, a database, or a library. Libraries have always fought to stay relevant, but this is just another push. The article doesn’t talk about libraries directly, but to me it’s a massive flashing warning sign: if AI can hollow out decades-old media empires in under two years, libraries that don’t actively define their value in this new landscape are going to face the same pressure. All that being said, I am still googling things all day long for myself and patrons, so I hope that we are safe for now!