Google's early attempt to pay websites for AI answers is struggling

In general, publishers in the test seem to agree that certain topics that are not as widely covered but have strong niche interest earn more, including anime and gaming. However, publishers also say that tracking the payments from month to month in the search console is often confusing. It’s not clear what counts as a meaningful contribution to an AI answer, so it’s impossible to plan for future earnings.

A shifting landscape

Google has noted over the years that its goal is to organize the world’s information, but that only works if there’s information online to organize. Frontier AI models are trained on data from around the web, letting them answer many questions within the knowledge cutoff. But in a search context, those answers often need the backing of live web content. If websites stop publishing or start blocking Google, AI search quality will decline.

The AI contribution pilot is a step toward forging a new relationship between Google and the publishers it relies on. However, the small payments and unclear nature of AI contributions could make expanding the program difficult. In the meantime, ill will is growing.

Some publishers have already started fighting back against Google’s shift toward AI search. The New York Times has an ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit against the company, alleging that Google (and other AI firms) illegally used its content to train AI models. Penske Media, which operates sites like Variety and Rolling Stone, has sued Google over lost traffic. It says the company’s decision to tie AI scraping to standard web indexing is unfair. With no dedicated option to opt out, sites that want to appear in Google’s organic search results also have to be part of AI search.

Regulators are starting to take notice, too. Earlier this year, the UK government ordered Google to provide an AI opt-out for publishers that would not penalize them in organic search results. The European Commission is also running an antitrust probe to determine if Google is fairly compensating publishers for using their content in AI answers. Given the company’s recent track record in the EU, it seems unlikely that it will work out in Google’s favor.