It seems probable that changes in discoverability tech such as AI summaries within Google search results, general services like ChatGPT and Gemini Deep Research, and specialist AI search tools such as Undermind, Elicit and SciSpace will reduce referral traffic from Google and Google Scholar to academic publishers journal websites in 2025.
A public acknowledgment includes things like blog posts, conference presentations, or factual information posted on social media.
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"(11 Mar 2025) Speaking at the Academic and Professional Publishing Conference, part of the London Book Fair, Oxford University Press (OUP) product strategy director John Campbell explained how the launch of Google’s AI-powered search summaries had led to a 19 per cent drop in click-through to academic reference services"
https://librarylearningspace.com/ai-search-summaries-cannibalize-academic-publishers-web-traffic/
Although widely commented on in blog posts and other forums, e.g. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/07/07/guest-post-when-the-front-door-moves-how-ai-threatens-scholarly-communities-and-what-publishers-can-do/ as far as I can tell no other publisher has come forward and provided data about a decrease in traffic.
@prismatic As far as I can tell, it was just OUP who made a public statement about this: https://librarylearningspace.com/ai-search-summaries-cannibalize-academic-publishers-web-traffic/
@PubTechRadar Yeah I saw that (which is probably AI-generated) and the article which it came from (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/ai-search-summaries-cannibalise-academic-publishers-web-traffic)
I thought it didn't meet the definition of “referral traffic from Google / Google Scholar” though. Specifically, the article is saying two things:
1. A 19% drop in click-through to academic reference services
2. Triggered by Google AI-powered search summaries
But I don't think we can equate “Click-through” as “referral traffic” unless it was explicitly defined as such. This is because we don't know if the traffic came from Google Search vs Google Scholar
and whether this traffic was to journal websites (as opposed to encyclopedias, dictionaries, or reference platforms).
It basically comes down to “Academic reference services” is broader than publisher journal sites. For OUP specifically, this can encompass Oxford Reference, Dictionaries, Background knowledge tools, which I thought wasn't in scope.
It's quite ambiguous, but I think this still falls under 0, though I could also see an argument for N/Aing the market.
@prismatic I don't think I can change this now (or at least I can't see how to change it). The London Book Fair comment is explicitly about Google search introducing AI summaries next to results and reducing onward traffic to OUP services that users would otherwise have clicked into. Even if “click-through” is not formally labelled as “referral traffic”, in practice it describes the same user journey: users searching → seeing AI AI-generated content → fewer visits to publisher-owned platforms.
However, I agree that based on the THE article, it's unclear exactly what academic reference services refer to/the precise traffic drop that relates to journal articles (the article goes on to talk about “zero-click journeys” to the Oxford Academic platform that includes their journals platform.
@PubTechRadar yeah a mod would have to change it but that sounds reasonable. Thank you for the discussion nonetheless!