Some of the UK’s biggest national news publishers have seen their visibility in Google search results fall by as much as 80% since 2019.
The findings, revealed in a new Enders Analysis report based on Sistrix data, show that platforms like The Mirror, Daily Mail, The Sun, Financial Times, The Telegraph, and The Guardian have all suffered substantial reductions in visibility, with the trend accelerating “sharply” since April this year.
The report highlights a potential link between this downturn and Google’s rollout of AI-generated search summaries, known as AI Overviews, which attempt to answer user queries directly at the top of search results – often pushing traditional publisher links further down the page, as reported by Press Gazette.
“The scale and timing of decline in publishers’ visibility across the board strongly points to changes in Google’s systems – not publisher intent – as the main driver,” Enders concluded. While strategy changes like paywalls or SEO spend may play a role, the systemic impact of AI appears much greater.
For the marketing and SEO industry the findings raise serious questions about the future of organic search and content discoverability. The report found that the likelihood of a publisher’s keywords triggering an AI Overview has increased by 3.5x since March.
The Mirror, operating a high-volume traffic model, has seen 80% of its Google search visibility disappear since January 2022. The Sun is down 67%, and The Mail is operating at less than half its previous visibility. Even traditionally resilient titles like The Guardian and Financial Times have seen declines of around 30%.
AI Overviews now appear more frequently on long-tail searches – especially entertainment and celebrity queries – which have traditionally delivered large volumes of low-funnel traffic. At the same time, high-intent branded and navigational searches remain largely unaffected.
The commercial impact in the short term is likely to be “modest,” Enders said, estimating low single-digit revenue hits for publishers most reliant on search. But the longer-term implications are more profound: reduced discoverability, fewer new users entering the conversion funnel, and a growing threat to affiliate revenues and ad-based models.
“Tabloids such as the Sun and Mirror face greater exposure: lower direct traffic insulation, higher AI Overview keyword coverage, and reliance on high-volume advertising models make them particularly vulnerable,” the report added.
Beyond AI Overviews, the report points to wider changes in search behaviour as users increasingly turn to platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity to find answers directly – bypassing Google altogether.
