There are a number of forces hitting small businesses in Adelaide. People are slashing discretionary spending, there are massive rises in rent and food, hidden unemployment and bloody toxic algae on the beaches.
Now Google AI is muscling on businesses which use content marketing to attract customers. They’re seeing sharp falls in Google referral traffic.
Since August, Republic Resumes has had a 15 per cent drop in Google traffic in Adelaide but less elsewhere. It’s a combo of the introduction of the AI Mode and local economic conditions.
The vast majority of the AI summaries are for informational type searches (“how do I”, “what is”) rather than transaction ones (“buy shoes”) or specific and targeted research.
For example, if you google how to fix a leaking tap, you’ll see an AI overview. But if you search for best plumber in my suburb, you won’t.
Google recently deployed in Australia a more advanced, chatbot-like form of AI search, AI Mode, which may further reduce referral traffic to websites.
Google now provides AI-generated answers and many businesses using content marketing are reporting significantly fewer visitors, as search users aren’t clicking on source links to the same extent.
Content marketing is where businesses publish useful content to attract customers to its site via Google search.
One measure of the open web’s health is its share of online advertising compared to apps and streaming platforms.
In 2019, 40 per cent of display adverts purchased via Google Ads were for the open web.
By early 2025, that figure has plummeted to just 11 per cent, according to the ABC
Through this year, Google rolled out AI-generated answers to search queries, so that by the second half of the year over a third of searches in Australia led to an AI summary.
Users who encounter a summary are much less likely to click on a traditional search result link.
Passive exposure to AI-generated information, mainly in search results, is now the main way the general public uses AI, supplanting other popular uses like image generation.
“Businesses’ websites that previously generated large amounts of traffic through content marketing have found that the traffic has almost evaporated if an AI Overview exists.
“It’s pretty brutal,” Kevin Indig, a US search engine optimisation (SEO ) expert with clients around the world, said. “We’re seeing drops in traffic of 50 per cent.”