Google is driving much less traffic to news publishers through Google Web Search while growing traffic via Google Discover. According to a recent analysis by Newzdash, which looked at 8.1 billion visits from hundreds of news publishers using the data found on Google Search Console, there is a significant shift between 2023 and 2024.
John Shehata, who founded Newzdash, shared the findings on X, stating:
The statistics showed a 14-point growth in traffic from Discover for tracked publishers, compared to a 10-point reduction from Google Search.
Here are the data points:
- Google Discover now accounts for 55.6% of publishers’ total traffic from Google, this is a 14% growth from 41.6%.
- Google Web Search Discover: Conventional search engine activity currently makes up 36% of publishers’ Google traffic, down 46.5% from the previous figure.
- Other types of search, including News, Google News, Video, and Image, experienced drops in traffic share.
The traffic for Google News fell from 7.3% to 6.0%, as did traffic to news tabs, images, and videos.
A chart covering all of this data can be found below:
John also added the following:
The question is; can you rely on the traffic that comes from Google Discover? We doubt it, so best of luck.