How Publishers Should Strategize for Google Right Now: SEO experts 

Google’s search engine has been sending less and less traffic to publishers. It’s expected to drop even faster now that AI Mode has launched in the U.S. So should publishers even be bothering with Google now? And if so, which bits of its ecosystem are still worth the effort?

AMO put out a call for SEO experts asking how they think publishers should approach the matter and—perhaps unsurprisingly, given their livelihoods rely on it—most said Google is still an important tool for visibility and traffic.

There was, however, disagreement over what’s still worth investing time into and plenty of useful advice as to how publishers can adapt their content as the platforms shift.

There are, broadly, three main ways Google sends visitors to publishers:

• Search
• Discover 
• News

Search has traditionally been the way many users navigated the web and so the largest driver of traffic for publishers, but algorithm changes and the rollout of AI summaries that remove the need to click through to a site for information have begun chipping away at its relevance.

A study by SEO tool provider Ahrefs in April found a one-third drop in click-through rates for the top Google search result when an AI Overview (i.e. summary) was present, while MailOnline SEO boss Carly Steven told the WAN-IFRA conference last month that the brand was losing more than half of its clicks when it appeared as the top result below an AI Overview.

Matt Tutt, a freelance marketing consultant, told AMO that in April, his clients “saw a fairly consistent 40% drop in organic traffic month-over-month… the likes of which I’ve not seen in over 15 years working as an SEO consultant.”

But as search traffic has ebbed, Discover traffic has risen: UK publishing giant Reach said in November the platform had become its single biggest referral source, while Newsweek rode a surge in Discover traffic to help it become one of the most visited news sites in the US.

Google Discover presents a personalized selection of stories to users of the company’s Chrome browser on mobile phones, often favoring lighter, evergreen stories with clickbait-y headlines.  Barry Schwartz, a longtime editor at specialist news site Search Engine Land, said the platform “can send a tremendous amount of traffic to publishers, but I wouldn’t consider that traffic reliable.”

He pointed out, however, that in May, Google began rolling Discover out for Chrome on desktop in certain countries, which may significantly juice the amount of traffic driven to publishers from the platform.

Google News, meanwhile, is the company’s dedicated news aggregator, and pops up in results when a user makes a search related to a story.

Don’t Rule Search Out Yet

Victor André Enselmann, the CEO of Danish digital marketing agency Modeva, was the only expert to endorse Discover as the best Google channel to double down on.

Although it is “increasingly volatile and opaque,” he said, Google Discover is still “high-reward.”

“Publishers who treat Discover like a social feed, and not a search engine, tend to do better,” he said, by using headlines and featured images that “are highly engaging and mobile-friendly.”

But four of the nine SEO experts said old school search remained the most reliable driver of traffic.

“Search as a channel is still absolutely worth investing in,” said Ciara Edmondson, an SEO and content manager at marketing agency Max Web Solutions. “While AI Overviews may reduce direct click through in some queries (which we are seeing already), the bigger picture is that quality content is still the backbone of visibility.

“AI summaries are trained on trustworthy sources, so being one of those sources still remains key like it always has. That means structured data, fast loading pages and genuine topical authority are more important than ever.”

Discover, she said, “is lucrative but it is also volatile.” Long-term, publishers should start thinking about how their content is going to start appearing within Google’s AI platforms.

Baruch Labunski, the founder and CEO of SEO firm Rank Secure, agreed. While he said “some effort should be put into Discover,” he argued the platform requires “considerable effort” and “targets those who have internet activity relating to your subject.

“That can be great with niche audiences, but could narrow down your audience too much, limiting your potential conversions.”

Instead, he emphasized classic search optimization, including “keywords, sequencing, niche phrases and using snippets.”

Chris Walton, a strategist at analytics consultancy Net Impression, said Google Discover is “great for spikes, awful for sustainable traffic.”

AI Overviews mean “the rules have changed,” Walton said. “Traditional SEO isn’t enough unless you’re also thinking about structured data, first-party signals and user intent shaping.” (Intent shaping means taking users beyond the content they arrived for, for example promoting related content and actions like newsletter sign ups.)

Among his clients, among them publishers, Walton said he had seen the best results from “treating search and Discover as short-term levers, but building out semantic ownership. [By] becoming the authority Google expects to feature, not just the one who optimised best.” (Semantic SEO involves producing useful content in a more holistic way than just dominating certain keywords.)

Got the AI Blues?

Some content can prove more resilient in the face of AI Mode and AI Overviews, the pros told AMO.

“AI Overviews are set to take over much of the high-level informational intent content,” said Stevie Deale, an SEO and content manager at marketing agency Gumpo. “But we’re still seeing strong opportunities in more specific, long-tail queries, especially where nuance or local context matters.

“This means that content answering very niche or direct questions, quickly and clearly, has the best chance of being surfaced in traditional search results.”

Heinz Klemann, a consultant at marketing auditor BeastBI, said that for the travel brands with whom he works, traffic “still comes through classic category-style queries like ‘best hotel in [city]’ or ‘things to do in [region].’

“These kinds of searches are not looking for one definitive answer. Instead, users want curated lists or inspiration, which means SEO-optimized category pages continue to perform well.”

And Keith Brodie, the founder of digital marketing agency Bizapult, said there are “quite a few techniques to reclaim traffic lost to AI Overviews… The key is creating content that matches the AI search intent. It has to be worth citing and clicking through to get the answer.”

The best way to do this is with content that AI struggles to summarize or replicate. Brodie gave as examples predictions, “what it’s really like” stories that can only be reported by a human who can “feel the room,” and breaking news on subjects involving multiple conflicting reports, because AI can be a poor judge of credibility.

“You can also optimize stories for the follow-up questions people ask after the AI summary, and I’d also suggest focusing on breaking (newish) news that AI can’t keep up with yet.”