Search slips, Discover delivers: Publishers navigate latest Google update

No apocalypse yet: Google’s March core update has brought manageable search traffic dips for some publishers, with AI Overviews dragging and Discover picking up some slack.

Google’s rollout of its generative AI search experience, AI Mode, in a new tab last week has stoked referral concerns, but for now, search traffic remains relatively stable, according to four publishing execs.

Referral traffic data from over 4,000 global sites shows Google Search and Discover traffic hasn’t changed that much this year, according to Chartbeat media researcher Cynthia Vu. There was a 9% decrease in Google Search pageviews from January 2025 to April 2025, and about a 6% increase in Google Discover traffic during that same period, according to Chartbeat’s analysis, which showed pageviews were flat from March to April 2025. 

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