We tracked the organic search traffic of CNET, Wired, The Verge, TechRadar, and six others from early 2024 to today. Combined, they've lost 65 million monthly visits. Some lost over 90%.
At their peaks, ten major tech publications pulled a combined 112 million organic visits per month from Google in the US. By January 2026, that number had fallen to 47 million. All ten sites are down, though not by equal amounts. Some lost 30%. Others lost over 90%.
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TL;DR 10 major tech publications lost a combined 65M monthly organic visits since their peaks. That's a 58% decline.
Digital Trends: 8.5M → 265K (-97%). ZDNet: 7.6M → 769K (-90%). The Verge: 5.3M → 790K (-85%).
Even the least affected sites are down significantly: CNET lost 47%, Tom's Guide lost 50%, Wired lost 62%.
NerdWallet lost 73% (25M → 6.8M) and Healthline lost 50% (111M → 56M), suggesting the pattern extends beyond tech.
The steepest declines started in mid-2025, coinciding with the expansion of Google's AI Overviews.
Methodology We pulled monthly US organic traffic estimates from Ahrefs for ten major English-language tech publications from February 2024 through January 2026. For each site, we identified the peak traffic month and compared it to January 2026 (the most recent complete month). All figures are Ahrefs estimates for the US market.
Site-by-Site Breakdown
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