YouTube creators are appearing in one in four AI search answers (although it is worth noting that some of this will be Google’s Gemini surfacing YouTube creators). Some studies suggest this dwarfs publisher referral traffic from AI search platforms: A 2025 analysis by Northwestern University found that news publishers captured just 3.2% of ChatGPT’s referral traffic and 7.4% of Perplexity’s.
Some creators might find AI-fuelled audience traffic incidental, but others are deliberately shaping their strategies to be more favorable to AI search engines.
Gigi Robinson started monitoring how she appeared across AI searches. She expanded her content by including a diverse C-suite guest list on her podcast to boost her citation count and establish herself as a thought leader. It worked, by her own account.
Over the long-term: The open web disintegrates
Here’s the thing about publishers pulling out of Google search: it would mean less premium content on the open web, and more SEO-farmed junk and unreliable content. We’ve already seen this on some social media platforms, which have become a cesspool of misinformation.
Consumption habits are already changing around search, leading to fewer links going to publishers. According to three separate reports tallied by The New York Times, people are spending nearly nine minutes more on AI mode than on Google Search. A 2025 study by search and marketing newsletter GrowthMemo found that in about 75% of sessions, people never left AI Mode for the web. Concurrently, over 55% of web traffic is now AI agents and not humans, Cloudflare told ADWEEK at Cannes.
AI labs are inking deals with publishers to license their content. We saw an early version with OpenAI’s deals with several major publishers like News Corp and Financial Times. Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace, launched in February, is also another version of what publisher remuneration could look like. Early partners include Business Insider, USA Today, Vox Media, among others.
