Publishers and Reddit Consider Blocking Google Over AI Search Traffic Losses

Google's push to turn Search into an AI answer engine is pushing major publishers to a breaking point. Reddit, USA Today, Reuters, Politico, The Economist, and People Inc. are reconsidering how much access they give Google as referral traffic continues to collapse, according to The Wall Street Journal. For AI builders and content-dependent products, this standoff signals a fundamental shift in how search traffic and training data will flow in the coming years.

What happened

Reddit is currently negotiating a possible renewal of its 2024 licensing agreement with Google, which reportedly pays Reddit around $60 million per year. The deal gave Google access to a constantly updated source of human conversations for AI training, while Reddit gained revenue ahead of its IPO. But as Google's AI products use that data to answer questions without sending users back to Reddit, the arrangement looks less appealing. Reddit shares fell as much as 5.8% in premarket trading following the report.

USA Today Co. is considering blocking Google's crawler entirely if search referrals continue to decline. Semrush data shows that organic US Google traffic to the national USA Today website fell by almost half between June 2025 and June 2026. Politico declined 23%, CNN lost around 25%, and Business Insider's traffic plunged more than 85%. USA Today Co. CEO Mike Reed said, "It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough."

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ordered Google to let publishers opt out of AI search features without sacrificing their place in traditional results. Google says it will test the controls in Britain before introducing them globally, though it has not provided a timeline.

Why AI builders should care

AI Overviews are changing user behavior. A Pew Research Center study found that users clicked traditional links in 15% of searches without an AI Overview, falling to just 8% when one appeared. Links inside Google's summaries received clicks in only 1% of searches. For any product that relies on search referral traffic for growth or monetization, this is a direct threat.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has repeatedly warned that AI summaries are destroying the business model that supported the web, and bots now account for around 56% of internet traffic. If publishers block Google's crawler, the quality and freshness of AI training data could degrade, affecting any AI product that depends on web content.

Practical implications

Publishers have several technical options, but each comes with tradeoffs. They can block content from being used to train Gemini through Google-Extended, but preventing it from appearing in AI Overviews risks losing visibility in conventional search as well. More extreme measures like noindex would remove pages from Google entirely, while nosnippet can also hurt their presence in results.

For AI builders, this means:

• Licensing deals for training data may become more expensive and harder to negotiate.
• Regulatory opt-out mechanisms (like the CMA mandate) could fragment the search landscape, making it harder to rely on Google as a consistent traffic source.
• Alternative distribution channels (direct traffic, newsletters, social, AI-native platforms) become more critical.

Caveats

The evidence in the provided sources is focused on reports and speculation. None of the actions described are universally enacted. Some publishers may continue to rely on Google traffic while exploring opt-out or training-data controls, avoiding disruption to traditional search results. The situation reflects ongoing negotiations and strategic considerations rather than a confirmed universal action.