In early 2024, ten major tech publications pulled a combined 110 million organic visits per month from Google in the US. By January 2026, that number had fallen to 47 million. All ten sites are down, though not by equal amounts. Some lost 30%. Others lost over 90%.

Site-by-Site Breakdown

Sorted by decline percentage. All figures are estimated US organic traffic from Ahrefs.

Most of the Damage Happened After Mid-2025

For most of these publications, the traffic curves held through early 2025 and then dropped sharply in the second half of the year. The monthly data makes the timing visible.

TechRadar peaked in July 2024 at 15.6 million monthly visits and fell to 4 million by January 2026. Digital Trends went from 8.6 million in March 2024 to 269,000, a 97% decline.

Not All Sites Declined Equally

The ten sites fall into roughly three groups when sorted by severity.

Down 85% or more: Digital Trends, ZDNet, HowToGeek, The Verge

These four sites lost enough traffic that their search-dependent revenue models face serious questions. Digital Trends went from 8.6M to 269K monthly visits. ZDNet, which was one of the larger enterprise tech publications online, dropped from 7.6M to 769K.

HowToGeek is worth noting specifically. Its content was predominantly step-by-step how-to guides: "how to take a screenshot on Windows," "how to change your DNS settings," etc. That's exactly the type of query Google's AI Overviews now answer directly in the search results without requiring a click. The site lost 85% of its search traffic.

Down 47-74%: TechRadar, Wired, Tom's Guide, CNET

These four still have substantial traffic but have lost roughly half or more since their peaks. TechRadar went from 15.6M to 4M. CNET, the largest of the group, dropped from 20.3M to 10.7M.

CNET had already been dealing with credibility damage from its AI-generated articles controversy in early 2024. Then came Google's product review algorithm changes, followed by AI Overviews reducing click-through on the informational queries that drove much of its traffic.

Down 29-30%: PCMag, Mashable

PCMag dropped from 10.5M to 7.4M. Mashable went from 16.1M to 11.3M. Meaningful losses, but both sites still operate at scale. Why these two fared better than the others isn't entirely clear from traffic data alone. Mashable's content skews more toward entertainment and culture, which may be harder for AI to summarize. PCMag has strong product-specific review traffic. But that's speculative.

Same Pattern in Finance and Health

We checked two of the largest publishers outside tech to see if the pattern held.

NerdWallet is publicly traded (NRDS) and its business depends on converting search visitors into financial product referrals. It went from 25M monthly organic visits to 6.8M, a 73% decline.

Healthline lost 55 million monthly visits, going from 111M to 56M. That's more traffic lost by a single site than the entire tech media category combined.

Possible Explanations

We can't prove causation from traffic curves alone, but three developments overlap with the decline timeline.

First, Google rolled out AI Overviews broadly starting in mid-2024. For informational queries like "how to change DNS settings" or "best wireless earbuds 2026," Google now generates an answer directly in the search results. The user gets what they need without clicking through to a publisher. The sites most dependent on these queries (HowToGeek, Digital Trends, ZDNet) are the ones with the steepest drops.

Second, Reddit has gained ranking position for commercial "best X" keywords that historically belonged to these publications. In a separate analysis, we found anonymous Reddit posts ranking in the top 3 for keywords like "best screen recorders," "best free VPN," and "best wireless earbuds under $200."

Third, a growing number of users are skipping Google entirely for product research, going directly to ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. There's no reliable public data on how large this shift is yet, but it represents traffic that never enters the search funnel at all.

It's likely some combination of all three. The timing of the steepest declines (second half of 2025) coincides with AI Overviews expanding to more query types and AI assistants reaching broader adoption.

Raw Data: Monthly Traffic for All Ten Sites

Full monthly organic traffic estimates for each publication, February 2024 through January 2026. This is the data behind the charts above.

Yuval Halevi

Helping SaaS companies and developer tools get cited in AI answers since before it was called "GEO." 10+ years in B2B SEO, 50+ cybersecurity and SaaS tools clients.