Antitrust Filing Says Google Cannibalizes Publisher Traffic via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Penske Media Corporation (PMC) filed a federal court memorandum opposing Google’s motion to dismiss its antitrust lawsuit. The company argues that Google has broken the longstanding premise of a web ecosystem in which publishers allowed their content to be crawled in exchange for receiving search traffic in return.

PMC is the publisher of twenty brands like Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and Rolling Stone.

Web Ecosystem

The PMC legal filing makes repeated references to the “fundamental fair exchange” where Google sends traffic in exchange for allowing them to crawl and index websites, explicitly quoting Google’s expressions of support for “the health of the web ecosystem.”

And yet there are some industry outsiders on social media who deny that there is any understanding between Google and web publishers, a concept that even Google doesn’t deny.

This concept dates to pretty much the beginning of Google and is commonly understood by all web workers. It’s embedded in Google’s Philosophy, expressed at least as far back as 2004:

“Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible.”

In May 2025 Google published a blog post where they affirmed that sending users to websites remained their core goal:

“…our core goal remains the same: to help people find outstanding, original content that adds unique value.”

What’s relevant about that passage is that it’s framed within the context of encouraging publishers to create high quality content and in exchange they will be considered for referral traffic.

The concept of a web ecosystem where both sides benefit was discussed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a June 2025 podcast interview by Lex Fridman where Pichai said that sending people to the human created web in AI Mode was “going to be a core design principle for us.”

In response to a follow-up question referring to journalists who are nervous about web referrals, Sundar Pichai explicitly mentioned the ecosystem and Google’s commitment to it.

Pichai responded:

“I think news and journalism will play an important role, you know, in the future we’re pretty committed to it, right? And so I think making sure that ecosystem… In fact, I think we’ll be able to differentiate ourselves as a company over time because of our commitment there. So it’s something I think you know I definitely value a lot and as we are designing we’ll continue prioritizing approaches.”

This “fundamental fair exchange” serves as the baseline competitive condition for their claims of coercive reciprocal dealing and unlawful monopoly maintenance.

That baseline helps PMC argue:

• That Google changed the understood terms of participation in search in a way publishers cannot refuse.
• And that Google used its dominance in search to impose those new terms.

And despite that Google’s own CEO expressed that sending people to websites is a core design principal and there are multiple instances in the past and the present where Google’s own documentation refers to this reciprocity between publishers and Google, Google’s legal response expressly denies that it exists.

The PMC document states:

“Google …argues that no reciprocity agreement exists because it has not “promised to deliver” any search referral traffic.”

Profound Consequences Of Google AI Search

PMC filed a federal court memorandum in February 2026 opposing Google’s motion to dismiss its antitrust complaint. The complaint details Google’s use of its search monopoly to “coerce” publishers into providing content for AI training and AI Overviews without compensation.

The suit argues that Google has pivoted from being a search engine (that sends traffic to websites) to an answer engine that removes the incentive for users to click to visit a website. The lawsuit claims that this change harms the economic viability of digital publishers.

The filing explains the consequences of this change:

“Google has shattered the longstanding bargain that allows the open internet to exist. The consequences for online publishers—to say nothing of the public at large—are profound.”

Google Is Using Their Market Power

The filing claims that the collapse of the traditional search ecosystem positions Google’s AI search system as coercive rather than innovative, arguing that publishers must either allow AI to reuse their content or risk losing search visibility.

The legal filing alleges that Google’s generative AI competes directly with online publishers for user’s attention, describing Google as cannibalizing publisher’s traffic, specifically alleging that Google is using their “market power” to maintain a situation in which publishers can’t block the AI without also negatively affecting what little search traffic is left.

The memorandum portrays a bleak choice offered by Google:

“Google’s search monopoly leaves publishers with no choice: acquiesce—even as Google cannibalizes the traffic publishers rely on—or perish.”

It also describes the role of AI grounding plays in cannibalizing publisher traffic for its sole benefit:

“Through RAG, or “grounding,” Google uses, repackages, and republishes publisher content for display on Google’s SERP, cannibalizing the traffic on which PMC depends.”

Expansion Of Zero-Click Search Results And Traffic Loss

The filing claims AI answers divert users away from publisher sites and diminish monetizable audience visits. Multiple parts of the filing directly confronts Google with the fact of reduced traffic from search due to the cannibalization of their content.

The filing alleges:

“Google reduces click‑throughs to publisher sites, increases zero‑click behavior, and diverts traffic that publishers need to support their advertising, affiliate, and subscription revenue.

…Google’s insinuation . . . that AI Overview is not getting in the way of the ten blue links and the traffic going back to creators and publishers is just 100% false . . . . [Users] are reading the overview and stopping there . . . . We see it.”

…The purpose is not to facilitate click-throughs but to have users consume PMC’s content, repackaged by Google, directly on the SERP.”

Zero-click searches are described as a component of a multi-part process in which publishers are injured by Google’s conduct. The filing accuses Google of using publisher content for training, grounding their AI on facts, and then republishing it within the zero-click AI search environment that either reduces or eliminates clicks back to PMC’s websites.

Should Google Send More Referral Traffic?

Everything that’s described in the PMC filing is the kind of thing that virtually all online businesses have been complaining about in terms of traffic losses as a result of Google’s AI search surfaces. It’s the reason why Lex Fridman specifically challenged Google’s CEO on the amount of traffic Google is sending to websites.

Google AI Shows A Site Is Offline Due To JS Content Delivery via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller offered a simple solution to a Redditor who blamed Google’s “AI” for a note in the SERPs saying that the website was down since early 2026.

The Redditor didn’t create a post on Reddit, they just linked to their blog post that blamed Google and AI. This enabled Mueller to go straight to the site, identify the cause as having to do with JavaScript implementation, and then set them straight that it wasn’t Google’s fault.

Redditor Blames Google’s AI

The blog post by the Redditor blames Google, headlining the article with a computer science buzzword salad that over-complicates and (unknowingly) misstates the actual problem.

The article title is:

“Google Might Think Your Website Is Down
How Cross-page AI aggregation can introduce new liability vectors.”

That part about “cross-page AI aggregation” and “liability vectors” is eyebrow raising because none of those terms are established terms of art in computer science.

The “cross-page” thing is likely a reference to Google’s Query Fan-Out, where a question on Google’s AI Mode is turned into multiple queries that are then sent to Google’s Classic Search.

Regarding “liability vectors,” a vector is a real thing that’s discussed in SEO and is a part of Natural Language Processing (NLP). But “Liability Vector” is not a part of it.

The Redditor’s blog post admits that they don’t know if Google is able to detect if a site is down or not:

“I’m not aware of Google having any special capability to detect whether websites are up or down. And even if my internal service went down, Google wouldn’t be able to detect that since it’s behind a login wall.”

And they appear to maybe not be aware of how RAG or Query Fan-Out works, or maybe how Google’s AI systems work. The author seems to regard it as a discovery that Google is referencing fresh information instead of Parametric Knowledge (information in the LLM that was gained from training).

They write that Google’s AI answer says that the website indicated the site was offline since 2026.:

“…the phrasing says the website indicated rather than people indicated; though in the age of LLMs uncertainty, that distinction might not mean much anymore.

…it clearly mentions the timeframe as early 2026. Since the website didn’t exist before mid-2025, this actually suggests Google has relatively fresh information; although again, LLMs!”

A little later in the blog post the Redditor admits that they don’t know why Google is saying that the website is offline.

They explained that they implemented a shot in the dark solution by removing a pop-up. They were incorrectly guessing that it was the pop-up that was causing the issue and this highlights the importance of being certain of what’s causing issues before making changes in the hope that this will fix them.

The Redditor shared they didn’t know how Google summarizes information about a site in response to a query about the site, and expressed their concern that they believe it’s possible that Google can scrape irrelevant information then show it as an answer.

They write:

“…we don’t know how exactly Google assembles the mix of pages it uses to generate LLM responses.

This is problematic because anything on your web pages might now influence unrelated answers.

…Google’s AI might grab any of this and present it as the answer.”

I don’t fault the author for not knowing how Google AI search works, I’m fairly certain it’s not widely known. It’s easy to get the impression that it’s an AI answering questions.

But what’s basically going on is that AI search is based on Classic Search, with AI synthesizing the content it finds online into a natural language answer. It’s like asking someone a question, they Google it, then they explain the answer from what they learned from reading the website pages.

Google’s John Mueller Explains What’s Going On

Mueller responded to the person’s Reddit post in a neutral and polite manner, showing why the fault lies in the Redditor’s implementation.

Mueller explained:

“Is that your site? I’d recommend not using JS to change text on your page from “not available” to “available” and instead to just load that whole chunk from JS. That way, if a client doesn’t run your JS, it won’t get misleading information.

This is similar to how Google doesn’t recommend using JS to change a robots meta tag from “noindex” to “please consider my fine work of html markup for inclusion” (there is no “index” robots meta tag, so you can be creative).”

Mueller’s response explains that the site is relying on JavaScript to replace placeholder text that is served briefly before the page loads, which only works for visitors whose browsers actually run that script.

What happened here is that Google read that placeholder text that the web page showed as the indexed content. Google saw the original served content with the “not available” message and treated it as the content.

Mueller explained that the safer approach is to have the correct information present in the page’s base HTML from the start, so that both users and search engines receive the same content.

Takeaways

There are multiple takeaways here that go beyond the technical issue underlying the Redditor’s problem. Top of the list is how they tried to guess their way to an answer.

They really didn’t know how Google AI search works, which introduced a series of assumptions that complicated their ability to diagnose the issue. Then they implemented a “fix” based on guessing what they thought was probably causing the issue.

Guessing is an approach to SEO problems that’s justified on Google being opaque but sometimes it’s not about Google, it’s about a knowledge gap in SEO itself and a signal that further testing and diagnosis is necessary.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Kues

Google’s Search Relations Team Debates If You Still Need A Website via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s Search Relations team was asked directly whether you still need a website in 2026. They didn’t give a one-size-fits-all answer.

The conversation stayed focused on trade-offs between owning a website and relying on platforms such as social networks or app stores.

In a new episode of the Search Off the Record podcast, Gary Illyes and Martin Splitt spent about 28 minutes exploring the question and repeatedly landed on the same conclusion: it depends.

What Was Said

Illyes and Splitt acknowledged that websites still offer distinct advantages, including data sovereignty, control over monetization, the ability to host services such as calculators or tools, and freedom from platform content moderation.

Both Googlers also emphasized situations where a website may not be necessary.

Illyes referenced a Google user study conducted in Indonesia around 2015-2016 where businesses ran entirely on social networks with no websites. He described their results as having “incredible sales, incredible user journeys and retention.”

Illyes also described mobile games that, in his telling, became multi-million-dollar and in some cases “billion-dollar” businesses without a meaningful website beyond legal pages.

Illyes offered a personal example:

“I know that I have a few community groups in WhatsApp for instance because that’s where the people I want to reach are and I can reach them reliably through there. I could set up a website but I never even considered because why? To do what?”

Splitt addressed trust and presentation, saying:

“I’d rather have a nicely curated social media presence that exudes trustworthiness than a website that is not well done.”

When pressed for a definitive answer, Illyes offered the closest thing to a position, saying that if you want to make information or services available to as many people as possible, a website is probably still the way to go in 2026. But he framed it as a personal opinion, not a recommendation.

Why This Matters

Google Search is built around crawling and indexing web content, but the hosts still frame “needing a website” as a business decision that depends on your goals and audience.

Neither made a case that websites are essential for every business in 2026. Neither argued that the open web offers something irreplaceable. The strongest endorsement was that websites provide a low barrier of entry for sharing information and that the web “isn’t dead.”

This is consistent with the fragmented discovery landscape that SEJ has been covering, where user journeys now span AI chatbots, social feeds, and community platforms alongside traditional search.

Looking Ahead

The Search Off the Record podcast has historically offered behind-the-scenes perspectives from the Search Relations team that sometimes run ahead of official positions.

This episode didn’t introduce new policy or guidance. But the Search Relations team’s willingness to validate social-only business models and app-only distribution reflects how the role of websites is changing in a multi-platform discovery environment.

The question is worth sitting with. If the Search Relations team frames website ownership as situational rather than essential, the value proposition rests on the specific use case, not on the assumption that every business needs one.

Featured Image: Diki Prayogo/Shutterstock