Will web traffic die? Google CEO Sundar Pichai defends AI search amidst publisher backlash
Business Today
The Verge, Decoder interview with Nilay Patel
“It’s always difficult to talk about individual cases, and at the end of the day, we are trying to satisfy user expectations. Users are voting with their feet, and people are trying to figure out what’s valuable to them.”
Sundar Pichaireported 20 May 2024- What you'll lose4/5
Small sites whose Google traffic went to zero.
- Condescension4/5
'Users are voting with their feet.'
- Tone-deafness4/5
Said about the sites in question.
- Doom0/5
None.
- Hypocrisy1/5
Search was built on sending people to those sites.
Full time13 pitchforksof a possible 25
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The occasion
The Verge, Decoder interview with Nilay Patel, reported 20 May 2024.
Context
Patel cited two small sites, HouseFresh and Retro Dodo, that said their Google traffic had gone to zero, and asked whether that is the right outcome of the platform shift. Pichai answered with this. Later in the interview he said that if website owners 'don't see value coming back from Google, I think we'll pay a price'. Business Today paraphrases the line slightly differently; the wording here is the transcript's.
Crowd reaction
Critical commentary
Search Engine Journal wrote that 'Pichai's comments come across as tone-deaf to the plight of web publishers' (about his answers on publisher traffic and data in the same interview); Business Today framed the interview as Pichai defending AI search 'amidst publisher backlash'. The criticism is of the interview's answers on publishers; no reaction to the 'voting with their feet' line alone was found.
- Primary source, transcript
- The Verge: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on AI-powered search and the future of the web
- Business Today: Will web traffic die? Google CEO Sundar Pichai defends AI search amidst publisher backlash
- Search Engine Roundtable: Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, On AI Overviews Killing Web, Smaller Publishers & Search Console Data
- Search Engine Journal: Google Won’t Commit To AI Search Traffic Data In Search Console
- Where the exact words are printed