Ten of the most widely read technology publications on the internet have collectively lost 65 million monthly visitors from Google search. Yuval Halevi reports for Growtika, tracking organic search data from February 2024 to January 2026 across sites including CNET, Wired, The Verge, TechRadar, and six others.
At their combined peak, these ten publications attracted 112 million monthly visits from Google in the United States. By January 2026, that figure had fallen to 47 million. The losses vary sharply by site. Digital Trends suffered the steepest decline, losing 97% of its traffic, dropping from 8.5 million to just 265,000 monthly visits. ZDNet, The Verge, and HowToGeek each lost around 85%. CNET and Mashable fared better, losing 47% and 30% respectively.
The sharpest drops occurred in the second half of 2025. Halevi points to three overlapping factors. Google began rolling out AI Overviews broadly in mid-2024, providing direct answers to informational queries without requiring users to click through to a website. Reddit has also gained prominent search rankings for product-related keywords that previously directed users to these publications. Additionally, a growing number of users now turn to AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of Google for product research entirely.
The pattern extends beyond technology. Personal finance site NerdWallet lost 73% of its search traffic. Health publisher Healthline lost 55 million monthly visits.
