Skip to content
snorklee
Sign in Try free for 14 days
AI traffic Analytics Pricing Manifesto Documentation Contact Sign in Try free for 14 days
Diagnosis · public figures verified at source on 1 September 2026

Your Google traffic is falling. It is not your fault.

What is left is how much — and whether it is you, or the whole market.

8% vs 15%

Share of visits where the user clicks a search result link when Google shows an AI summary — versus 15% when it shows none. Pew Research Center, published 22 July 2025, from 68,879 Google searches in March 2025.

In other words: on those searches, nearly one click in two no longer goes to a website. Yours included.

Find out if it is me or the market See what Snorklee shows
€8 per month — 200,000 pageviews, 10 sites Ex. VAT. 14-day free trial, no credit card. Everything is included: there are no add-ons.

It is not you. It is everyone.

Four different firms did the counting. Four periods, one direction.

Search traffic declines published by four independent sources. Every row carries its window and its source; none of these figures is ours, and all were re-read at source on 1 September 2026.
What was counted Change Window Source
Pageviews arriving from Google Search, across the Chartbeat network −34% December 2024 → December 2025 Chartbeat
Organic Google traffic to over 2,500 news sites, worldwide −33% November 2024 → November 2025 Reuters Institute, Chartbeat data
The same traffic, but in the United States only −38% November 2024 → November 2025 Reuters Institute, Chartbeat data
Organic traffic to US news sites −26% since AI Overviews launched Similarweb
Organic traffic, all sectors combined −23.6% January 2023 → July 2026 First Page Sage
Media and publishing, in the same study −47.3% January 2023 → July 2026 First Page Sage

Read on 1 September 2026. Chartbeat: report “Navigating the New Traffic Landscape”, billions of pageviews across 4,000+ sites in 70 countries — the document carries no printed date; Axios broke it on 17 March 2026. Reuters Institute: “Journalism, Media and Technology Trends and Predictions 2026”, published 12 January 2026, on a Chartbeat panel of 2,576 sites. Similarweb: report on US publishers, published 28 June 2025 and updated 18 November 2025. First Page Sage: report of 25 August 2026, 218 sites — its own customers, not a representative sample, and we say so because the report says so.

One figure doing the rounds that needs correcting: “−38% Google traffic to publishers year over year” is not a worldwide figure. It is the United States figure. Worldwide, the same measurement gives −33%. We write this because we nearly published the other version.

You broke nothing. The tap changed shape.

But the smaller you are, the harder you take it.

In one year, small publishers lost 60% of their search traffic. Large ones lost 22%.

−60%

Small sites — 1,000 to 10,000 daily pageviews

This is the band that takes the most, and the most crowded one. Year-over-year change in search traffic. Chartbeat, report “Navigating the New Traffic Landscape”, read on 1 September 2026.

−47%

Medium sites — 10,000 to 100,000 daily pageviews

Half the traffic gone, for a site that already had a settled audience. Year-over-year change in search traffic. Chartbeat, same report, read on 1 September 2026.

−22%

Large sites — 100,000 daily pageviews and up

The large ones take it too, but almost three times less. They are the ones quoted in the articles about “the search decline”. Chartbeat, same report, read on 1 September 2026.

A detail many articles skipped: Chartbeat’s table titles its column “year-over-year change”. Several write-ups presented it as a two-year decline. We publish what the table says.

Almost threefold apart depending on your size: a market average therefore does not tell you what you lost.

Where the clicks went.

They did not go to a competitor. They went nowhere.

The clickless search became the norm

68% of all Google searches end with nobody opening a website. Similarweb, data from the first four months of 2026, published 10 June 2026. On news searches, the same firm measured 56% in May 2024 and nearly 69% in May 2025 — figures from its report, relayed by Press Gazette on 7 July 2025.

And the curve is not flattening

74.6% of tracked searches end without a click in 2026, against 54.1% in 2022: twenty points more in four years. First Page Sage, report of 25 August 2026, 218 sites tracked and 3.4 billion sessions.

The summary keeps the click

When an AI summary appears, its own source links are clicked in just 1% of visits. And 26% of those visits end without opening anything at all, against 16% with no summary. Pew Research Center, published 22 July 2025.

AI Mode sends back almost nothing

In Google’s AI Mode, 93% of sessions lead to no external site — the published range is 92 to 94%. Semrush, published 30 July 2025, from 69 million US desktop sessions, 1 May to 5 July 2025.

A correlation, not a proven cause

These studies observe that the two curves move together. None establishes that AI summaries cause the decline. First Page Sage measures a 0.89 correlation between summary coverage and organic traffic loss — a correlation, and its report words it that way. The Reuters Institute publishes its own decline while adding that “it is not clear how much of this is down to AI overviews”. So we will not claim more than they do.

How to find out what you, specifically, lost.

Only one way: put your own figures side by side. Snorklee does it in one screen.

Your real impressions, your real clicks

Snorklee reads your Google Search Console and your Bing Webmaster Tools, read-only: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position, in one table. Impressions holding while clicks fall is the signature of a market-wide decline, not of a ranking drop.

Next to your real visits

Search Console tells you what Google displayed. Snorklee shows, on the same page and the same window, what actually reached you: visits, pages, countries, devices. The gap between the two is your own decline — and you finally see which pages carry it. The full web analytics is included.

And what the AIs are doing meanwhile

The AI bots that read your pages and the visitors the assistants send back are counted separately, never folded into “Direct”. So you see what search takes away and what the AIs give back, over the same window. The ratio between the two is the other half of the story.

What Snorklee does not do — and will not pretend to

  • Snorklee does not measure AI Overviews. Google does not expose them in the Search Console API: the “type” field of the searchAnalytics query only accepts web, image, video, news, discover and googleNews. The “Generative AI” report exists in the Search Console interface, not in the API Snorklee reads.
  • Snorklee counts no citations. It sees the site a visitor comes from, never whether your page was quoted inside an assistant’s answer.
  • Snorklee recovers no lost click. Nobody can. It tells you how much you lost and on which pages; what you do about it stays your call.
  • Bing only provides a snapshot: its figures replace the previous ones at every sync. There is no dated history on the Bing side, only the current state.
  • The search screen compares 90 days at most, and the sync runs once a night, not in real time. When you connect Google Search Console, however, Snorklee pulls your last sixteen months of dated history, so you do not have to wait.

Frequently asked questions about the search traffic decline.

Is everyone losing search traffic?
Yes, in every published measurement to date. Chartbeat reports −34% of pageviews arriving from Google Search between December 2024 and December 2025. The Reuters Institute, on Chartbeat data, reports −33% of organic Google traffic to over 2,500 news sites worldwide between November 2024 and November 2025, and −38% in the United States. First Page Sage reports −23.6% of organic traffic across all sectors between January 2023 and July 2026, and −47.3% for media and publishing. Similarweb reports −26% to US news sites since AI Overviews launched. None of these panels is yours: they give the direction, not your figure.
How much does a site lose, on average?
There is no useful average, because the size of the drop depends on the size of the site. Chartbeat’s table gives, as year-over-year change in search traffic: −60% for sites at 1,000 to 10,000 daily pageviews, −47% for those at 10,000 to 100,000, and −22% above 100,000. Almost threefold apart. A market average therefore teaches you nothing about your site; only your own reading does.
Why do small sites lose more than large ones?
The readings observe it; they do not explain it. Chartbeat publishes the gap — −60% against −22% year over year — without giving a cause. One can imagine that a small site lives more on informational queries, the ones Google can summarize itself, or that a well-known brand keeps being searched by name. Those are hypotheses, and we present them as such. We would rather give you the figure and its source than an explanation nobody has demonstrated.
Are AI Overviews the cause of the decline?
The sources observe a correlation; none establishes causality. First Page Sage measures a 0.89 correlation between AI summary coverage and organic traffic loss, and its report does use the word correlation. The Reuters Institute publishes its own decline while noting that it is not clear how much of it is down to AI Overviews. Pew Research Center compares two groups of visits — 8% clicks when a summary appears, 15% when none does — without claiming the summary is the cause, and the searches that trigger a summary are not the same searches as the rest. So we stick to what they say: the curves move together, the cause is not proven.
Does Snorklee measure AI Overviews?
No, and that is an API limit, not a choice of ours. Google does not expose AI Overviews in the Search Console API: the “type” field of the searchAnalytics query only accepts web, image, video, news, discover and googleNews. The “Generative AI” report does exist, but in the Search Console interface, not in the API Snorklee reads. Nobody can therefore produce an AI Overviews count from that API: a tool that displays one estimated it some other way, and it is worth asking how.
Will I get my traffic back?
Probably not that traffic, and no tool will give it back: a click that did not happen cannot be recovered. What remains doable is more useful than a promise. Knowing which pages are losing and which are holding. Seeing whether your impressions hold while your clicks fall, which is what separates a market decline from a ranking drop. Tracking the visitors the assistants send you, which is a new and measurable channel. Snorklee is there to measure and to decide, never to promise a rollback.
Why not just look at Search Console?
Because it only shows half the story. Search Console tells you what Google displayed and what it reckons it sent you. It does not show your real visits, nor Bing, nor the AI bots reading your pages, nor the visitors ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude send back. Snorklee puts all four on the same screen and the same window — up to 90 days for the search part. It is the gap between those halves that tells you whether the decline is the market’s or yours.
Is this yet another tool to add?
It is one tool instead of several. Snorklee replaces your analytics and adds Search Console, Bing and AI activity on top, for €8 a month ex. VAT, everything included. It sets no cookie and therefore triggers no consent banner: it removes a brick instead of adding one. Installing it takes one line of script, or one plugin on WordPress. The trial lasts 14 days and asks for no credit card.
How much does Snorklee cost?
Snorklee One costs €8 a month ex. VAT. That price covers 200,000 pageviews a month and 10 sites, with no add-on to buy. The trial lasts 14 days and asks for no credit card. Above that, the public tiers are €29 for 500,000 pageviews, €39 for 1 million and €59 for 2 million. Full web analytics, the Search Console and Bing readings and the AI traffic measurement are included in every tier.
14-day free trial · no credit card

See your real decline, not other people’s average.

€8 a month ex. VAT: 200,000 pageviews, 10 sites, everything included. A 14-day trial, no credit card, and nothing to uninstall if you leave. Hosted in Paris.

See my real decline See pricing