How The Wall Street Journal is strategizing for 'Google zero'

"The referral traffic crisis is keeping many publishers up at night. They claim Google's AI Overviews, its AI-generated summaries on the search page, is resulting in fewer clickthroughs to their sites. But there are ways publishers can build SEO strategies to try to insulate themselves from the changes. "I do think the conversation has a lot of doomerism, rather than being focused on identifying opportunities and trying to find new ways to rise to this challenge," Hyatt said. "This is an opportunity to get things right for your business. As publishers, we should always have been moving towards the ultimate goal, essentially, of bringing folks into our ecosystem.""

"What works for traditional SEO will work for AI Traditional SEO best practices still apply in the AI era, Hyatt said. He referred to Google's Core Web Vitals and schema to ensure a good user experience, but also to rank well in search and crawled by AI engines to get surfaced on those platforms. That means The Wall Street Journal focuses on layout, structured content and fast page load speed."

Publishers face a referral traffic crisis as AI-generated search summaries and overviews reduce clickthroughs to sites. Traditional SEO best practices remain effective: prioritize Core Web Vitals, schema markup, fast page load speeds, clear layout and structured content to improve user experience and visibility to AI crawlers. AI platforms use query fan-out, turning a single user query into many and crawling multiple pages, increasing competition across hundreds of sites. Publishers should prioritize attracting high-value clicks, adapt content to be discoverable by AI engines, and explore licensing or partnerships with AI platforms to influence content distribution and capture audience engagement.

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