ChatGPT and Other Chatbots Are Hurting Publishers Even Worse Than We Thought

Chatbots from companies like OpenAI and Google appear to be sucking up much-needed traffic to websites and massively screwing publishers over in the process. As Forbes reports, new data from the content licensing platform TollBit shows that AI chatbots send a whopping 96 percent less traffic to publishers' websites than traditional search engines — even as companies like OpenAI and Perplexity promise tangible gains to media companies that partner with them. When looking at metrics for 160 news and blogging publishers, TollBit found that AI companies' bots scraped those sites an average of two million times during the fourth quarter of 2024. Each page was scraped around seven times on average — a click-stealing scheme, if you will, that results in zero ad revenue for the publishers involved, since bot clicks don't generate any money for advertisers. "We are seeing an influx of bots that are hammering these sites every time a user asks a question," explained Toshit Panigrahi, TollBit' ... Read full article.