# ADWEEK Tech Advantage: Publishers Pull Back from Google AI Search, While Creators Push On > Source: > Published: 2026-08-05 06:00:00+00:00 *ADWEEK Advantage is part of a series where every month, our top editors interpret what happened in each vertical, and what it means for the future.* More cracks are emerging in Google’s search empire. Now, some of the empire’s very subjects—publishers—are finally turning their back on Google, a once unimaginable move, as [ADWEEK reported last month](https://www.adweek.com/media/publishers-opt-out-google-search/). Beginning September 15, Cloudflare’s site security software, used by publishers including Financial Times, Condé Nast, and The Atlantic, will default to blocking crawlers that scrape for both search indexing and AI training for new publishers and those using its free tier. Google and others like Bing fit the description. Along with Cloudflare, USA Today and creator network Beehiiv also told ADWEEK they were preparing to delist Google. In doing so, publishers who once had no real choice but to let Google’s crawlers in are now confronted with a brutal dilemma: keep training AI assistants that are promising limited audiences, or disappear from the Search engine and cut off a giant source of traffic in the process. Also this month, Google touted its ballooning AI investment, a position that cannibalizes its bread-and-butter search business, as ADWEEK reported. The tech giant posted [negative](https://www.adweek.com/media/google-barrels-ahead-with-ai-spending-as-its-search-business-sees-early-cracks/) free cash flow for the first time in the company’s history—about $5.9 billion in the red—as AI investment outran the cash. The company’s Search and ads business is still growing at 17%, reaching $63.3 billion. But the AI buildout is eating into some of that money-making arm. **In the short term: Some creators adapt to AI search ** While some publishers are rethinking their commitment to Google search, some creators are adapting their strategies to appear in AI-fuelled results more often, as I covered a few weeks ago. [Andrew Polo](https://www.adweek.com/agencies/these-creators-are-hacking-chatgpt-to-rake-in-brand-deals/) gave an interview with HealthCentral about his experience with eczema, and then began being surfaced in ChatGPT queries about the skin condition. After ChatGPT began citing him as an eczema creator, he saw a 50% increase in inbound brand inquiries and a modest lift in his social following, an outcome his team called accidental but a win. [YouTube creators are appearing in one in four AI search answers](https://www.adweek.com/media/youtube-content-creators-are-winning-the-ai-search-game-jellyfish-data-finds/) (although it is worth noting that some of this will be Google’s Gemini surfacing YouTube creators). Some studies suggest this dwarfs publisher referral traffic from AI search platforms: A 2025 analysis by [Northwestern University](https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/03/ai-search-engines-fail-to-produce-accurate-citations-in-over-60-of-tests-according-to-new-tow-center-study/) found that news publishers captured just 3.2% of ChatGPT’s referral traffic and 7.4% of Perplexity’s. Some creators might find AI-fuelled audience traffic incidental, but others are deliberately shaping their strategies to be more favorable to AI search engines. [Gigi Robinson](https://www.adweek.com/agencies/these-creators-are-hacking-chatgpt-to-rake-in-brand-deals/) started monitoring how she appeared across AI searches. She expanded her content by including a diverse C-suite guest list on her podcast to boost her citation count and establish herself as a thought leader. It worked, by her own account. **Over the long-term: The open web disintegrates ** Here’s the thing about publishers pulling out of Google search: it would mean less premium content on the open web, and more SEO-farmed junk and unreliable content. We’ve already seen this on some social media platforms, which have become a cesspool of misinformation. Consumption habits are already changing around search, leading to fewer links going to publishers. According** **to three separate reports tallied by [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/technology/google-ai-open-web.html), people are spending nearly nine minutes more on AI mode than on Google Search. A 2025 study by search and marketing newsletter [GrowthMemo](https://www.growth-memo.com/p/what-our-ai-mode-user-behavior-study) found that in about 75% of sessions, people never left AI Mode for the web. Concurrently, over 55% of web traffic is now AI agents and not humans, [Cloudflare told ADWEEK at Cannes](https://www.adweek.com/media/why-the-bot-majority-internet-demands-a-marketing-reset/). AI labs are inking deals with publishers to license their content. We saw an early version with OpenAI’s deals with several major publishers like News Corp and Financial Times. Microsoft’s Publisher Content Marketplace, launched in February, is also another version of what publisher remuneration could look like. Early partners include Business Insider, USA Today, Vox Media, among others. Google’s last major agreement was in 2024 with Reddit to train its AI models and improve its search services, followed by a deal with The Associated Press in 2025 to deliver up-to-date news on its AI chatbot Gemini. It has also more nuanced [ongoing](https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial-intelligence/2026/google-tells-news-publishers-to-share-content-for-ai-training-or-lose-fees/) licensing plans with publishers. It’s some improvement over being scraped for nothing. But tech companies are the ones setting the price, and it doesn’t compare to what publishers have lost. We’ll be waiting to see if other publishers follow Cloudflare’s lead and start blocking crawlers outright, rather than negotiating around the edges. As we have seen in the past, quitting major platforms is often too painful to stomach.