Amid falling traffic, publishers are investing in engagement, registration and citations

When Google surfaces an AI-generated answer at the top of a search result, most people don’t click through. Organic click-through rates drop 61% on queries where an AI Overview appears. The pages hit hardest are those publishers have historically relied on for volume: weather, horoscopes and service content. Breaking news and hard-news queries are largely exempt from AI Overviews.

Most media leaders surveyed expect search traffic to fall another 43% within three years, and one-fifth expect losses above 75%.

Invest in direct reader relationships

The publishers that still grow revenue despite declining traffic use a few key tactics: they raise prices, focus on churn reduction and invest in channels they control. The most resilient of those are email lists, apps and registered audience — none of which depend on a platform deciding whether their content gets seen.

Advance Local launched 15 subscriber-exclusive newsletters in 2024 across its 10 U.S. markets. Subscribers who received those newsletters were retained at rates up to 40% higher than those who didn’t receive them. A newsletter list belongs to a publisher — it doesn’t shrink when an algorithm changes.

The practical starting point for publishers is to figure out what percentage of their current audience they can reach without a referral source. If most of their readers are anonymous, there’s no way to reach them when search traffic drops further — no email address, no account, no way to serve them a personalized experience that brings them back.

Make registration a priority

When search traffic was high, anonymous visitors didn’t matter — there were always more coming. Now, every reader who leaves without registering is one that publishers have no direct way to reach.

Registration walls, newsletter signup prompts and free account creation all serve the same purpose: converting a one-time visitor into a known reader publishers can reach again. The faster that happens in a session, the more value publishers get from traffic that’s already declining — and the less dependent they are on any single referral source.

Piano saw this play out with a major U.S. public media organization in their client base. Its search visitors converted to paid subscriptions at a better rate than direct visitors, but the volume was falling and unpredictable. The publisher built personalized “For You” pages to give readers a reason to return directly, added app download prompts for mobile visitors and used content recommendations to extend sessions. Exit-intent recommendations alone saved 3.6% of first-time visitors from leaving, and those readers came back more engaged.

In another case, a major U.S. business publisher removed a redundant verification step from its registration flow using Piano’s Composer. This resulted in desktop subscription completions jumping up 52% and mobile completions increasing by 184%.

Invest in content that earns citations, not just rankings

Ranking for high-volume informational queries puts publishers in direct competition with AI Overviews — exactly the content that’s lost the most traffic.What’s working instead is editorial authority. According to Seer Interactive’s analysis of 42 organizations, being cited in an AI Overview drives significantly more clicks than appearing in search results without a citation — 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks. The publishers cited are the ones with distinctive, trusted editorial voices. Original reporting, first-person analysis and coverage with a clear point of view are also the content types that build brand recognition, drive direct visits and sustain subscriptions.

Focus on metrics that track engagement

Moderately and highly engaged search visitors convert to subscriptions at significantly higher rates than one-off visitors. The metrics worth tracking are the ones that help publishers find and convert them faster:

• Share of known versus anonymous users in the audience
• Newsletter subscriber growth and open rates
• App downloads and monthly active users
• Registration conversion rate by traffic source
• Pages per session and return visit rate among search visitors who do arrive

If pageviews from organic search are still a primary KPI, then publishers are optimizing for a channel that’s actively shrinking. Shift toward engagement depth, known-user conversion rates and subscriber lifetime value. The publishers who make that shift now will be better positioned for whatever platform change comes next.

Partner insights from Piano