Artificial intelligence platforms quickly become a new internet distribution channel. In June 2025, they generated over 1.13 billion visits to the most popular 1,000 sites in the world, we are talking about an increase of 357% compared to the same month last year, according to a similarweb report quoted by Techcrunch.
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The main source of this traffic is Chatgpt, which sends over 80% of the total visits of AI, followed by platforms such as gemini, claude, perplexity or gark. Among the sites that have benefited the most this growth are Yahoo (2.3 million visits), Reuters, The Guardian, India Times and Business Insider. In the e-commerce area, in the top are Amazon, Etsy and Ebay, and in Tech and Social Media: Google, Reddit, Facebook and Github.
However, the press is not equally affected. The publications that allow the AIs to access and cite their content, such as The Guardian or Reuters, benefit from this new traffic channel. In contrast, publications such as The New York Times, who have chosen to block the access of AI in the context of disputes regarding the use of articles to train linguistic models, do not appear in these results and, implicitly, do not receive traffic from this source.
However, the major problem is not only related to who or not in the AI platforms. The classic traffic distribution through Google Search begins to change significantly – and this even affects the visible publications in AI.
A study by Pew Research Center shows that when a Google result includes an overview, which is an automatic artificial intelligence summary, only 8% of users click on the link links. Without this summary, the click rate goes up to 15%. In other words, users are already getting the response from the interface and no longer accessing the original sources.
Up to 79% loss of traffic
An article published by The Guardian on July 24, 2025 analyzes the phenomenon in detail. According to a study by Authoritas, a site previously ranked first in a search can lose up to 79% of traffic if placed under an overview. At the same time, the links to YouTube, owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, become more prominent.
The study was included in an official complaint submitted to the Competition and Market Authority in the UK (CMA) by Foxglove organizations, Independent Publishers Alliance and Movement for an open web. They claim that Google uses the editorial contents to generate AI answers, without sending users to the sites where it has taken over the information.
“The current situation is completely unsustainable and will eventually lead to the disappearance of quality information on the Internet (…) Google holds captive users in a closed garden, taking over and monetizing the content created by others, including the press,” said Owen Meredith, the executive director of News Media Association, quoted by The Guardian.
Google rejected the accusations, claiming that studies are based on wrong methodologies and non -representative sets of query. A spokesman said that AI in Search creates new opportunities for sites to be discovered and that Google continues to send “billions of clicks every day.”
Increasing traffic for those open to AI
Some publications receive more traffic than ever, but from new channels, controlled by AI platforms. At the same time, in Google Search, the original sources are increasingly accessed, even when they appear on the page.
“It would be serious enough if Google was limited to stealing the work of journalists and presenting it as their own.” said Rosa Curling, director of Foxglove. “But even worse is that he uses this job to feed his own tools and profits, while making things more difficult for the editors, so that they reach the readers they depend on.”
Who earns visibility
In the top of the sites that benefited from traffic from AI in June 2025, according to Techcrunch, there are: Yahoo (2.3 million visits), Yahoo Japan (1.9 million), Reuters (1.8 million), The Guardian (1.7 million), India Times (1.2 million) and Business Insider (1 million). These allow the indexation by AI and are frequently cited in the responses generated automatically.
In the e-commerce area, Amazon was a detached leader with 4.5 million visits, followed by Etsy (2 million) and Ebay (1.8 million). In Tech and Social Media, Google attracted 53.1 million visits, followed by Reddit (11.1 million), Facebook (11 million), Github (7.4 million), Microsoft (5.1 million), Canva (5 million), Instagram (4.7 million), Linkedin (4.4 million), Bing (3.1 million) and Pinterest (2.5 million).
Apart from these categories, YouTube registered 31.2 million visits, Wikipedia gathered 10.8 million, and in the area of education and science, Researchgate had 3.6 million visits, and Nih.gov, 5.2 million. Other sites that have attracted relevant traffic are Europa.eu, investing.com, Home Depot, daily, Kayak and Zara.
