Ziff Davis, the US publisher behind CNET, IGN and PCMag, told investors its pages were shown in Google's AI features about 2.7 billion times last quarter, nearly 10 times the clicks those sites got from Google Search. Organic Google referrals fell about 37% in a year.
Dominic Coutts
Appearing in AI answers and getting visitors are now 2 separate things, and only one of them pays. If your impressions hold while your clicks slide, nothing is broken on your site, so do not spend money trying to fix it.
What happened
Ziff Davis, the US publisher that owns CNET, IGN and PCMag, reported its quarterly results on 6 November. Organic referrals from Google fell about 37% year on year, after a fall of about 23% the year before. Over the same 3 months its pages were shown inside Google's AI features around 2.7 billion times, which its chief executive said was nearly 10 times the clicks those sites got from Google Search. He told investors the company is not planning on a search recovery. Tripadvisor reported the same week that changes in the search landscape were behind most of a 369.5 million dollar writedown.
What it means for you
Read the numbers carefully. These are large American media companies, the 2.7 billion counts times a link was shown rather than times anyone read it, and the comparison is against all Google clicks, not just clicks from AI answers. The shape of it still matters. Search Console now reports how often your pages appear in Google's AI features, and it reports no clicks for them at all. Visibility and visits have come apart. That gap is not a fault on your site, so it is not something more SEO work will close.
What to do
- If your Search Console has the generative AI performance report, put its impressions next to your Search clicks for the last 6 months. The direction of the 2 lines is the number worth watching. Not every site has the report yet.
- Judge your main pages on enquiries rather than visits, and warn whoever reads your reports before they spot the drop themselves.
- Do not budget on organic clicks recovering. Assume the same visibility brings fewer visits, and decide now where the shortfall comes from.
PPC Land
Worth doing something about this week.
You still rank. But Google's answering for you.
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