Overall, the test editors seem to agree that certain topics that don’t have as broad coverage but have strong niche interest earn more, including anime and games. However, publishers also say that tracking payments month to month in Search Console is often confusing. It’s unclear what counts as a significant contribution to an AI response, making it impossible to plan for future gains.
A changing landscape
Google has noted over the years that its goal is to organize the world’s information, but that only works if there is information online to organize. Frontier AI models are trained with data from across the web, allowing them to answer many questions within the knowledge boundary. But in a search context, those answers often need to be supported by live web content. If websites stop publishing or start blocking Google, the quality of AI search will decrease.
The AI contribution pilot is a step toward forging a new relationship between Google and the publishers it depends on. However, the small payments and unclear nature of AI contributions could make it difficult to expand the program. Meanwhile, ill will is on the rise.
Some publishers have already started fighting Google’s shift toward AI search. A coalition of book publishers has filed a lawsuit over Google’s alleged use of copyrighted content in artificial intelligence training. Penske Media, which operates sites such as Variety and Rolling Stone, sued Google for loss of traffic. He says the company’s decision to link AI scraping with standard web indexing is unfair. Without a dedicated opt-out option, sites that want to appear in Google’s organic search results must also be part of AI search.
Regulators are starting to take notice, too. Earlier this year, the UK government ordered Google to provide publishers with an AI opt-out that would not penalize them in organic search results. The European Commission is also conducting an antitrust investigation to determine whether Google is fairly compensating publishers for using their content in AI responses. Given the company’s recent track record in the EU, it seems unlikely to work in Google’s favor.
