For years, Salvatore Aranzulla has been Italy’s leading example of digital success. From his proverbial bedroom to a publishing empire with a ubiquitous website, always on the first page of Google. All this, of course, thanks to a degree in economics from Bocconi University. No matter how geeky or passionate about the subject, anyone who’s ever searched for a guide on a computer topic knows his name and his face.
A result achieved thanks to a maniacal mastery of SEO , that is, the rules for pleasing search engines. Now, however, Aranzulla explains in an interview with Fanpage, something in the bond between Google, publishers, and bloggers is breaking. Traffic is plummeting, and now more than ever the fate of so many sites seems to be hanging by an extremely precarious thread. The causes of this shift have a name: AI Overviews , the artificial intelligence-generated summaries that appear at the top of Google results.
HAS THE PACT BETWEEN GOOGLE AND SITES BROKEN?
Aranzulla stated that this trend has already caused an average 25% drop in traffic on Aranzulla.it , a figure that inevitably impacts advertising revenue. If traffic drops, he said, revenue also decreases, making it more difficult to support the work of content producers.
There’s an implicit pact between Google and those who publish texts on the internet. Publishers, let’s say. You provide free content and Google drives traffic to your site. The profit? You can monetize it from advertising . Now that’s changing. Ask Google which smartphone is best, perhaps even typing “Aranzulla” in the keywords, and instead of taking you to my site, you find a text compiled based on my assessments or those of my collaborators. And that’s detrimental to us.
he explained.
This is a blow to Aranzulla, but also to the rest of the publishing industry. A Pew Research survey released in July revealed a dire situation: 26% of users who view a summary generated by Google’s AI end their browsing session there. They don’t click on any further links for more information. The result is a widespread decline in traffic: fewer visits, fewer banner views, and less revenue to pay the site and its contributors.
In light of these developments, Aranzulla advocates for a reevaluation of the relationship between Google and content creators. He suggests that implementing measures to ensure that AI-generated summaries do not replace original content could benefit both publishers and users. By fostering an environment where users are encouraged to engage with source material, the publishing industry may regain some of the traffic lost and subsequently bolster revenue streams essential for supporting quality journalism. This approach could restore balance to the digital ecosystem, benefiting all stakeholders involved.
Aranzulla is holding firm for now, thanks in part to its unique structure: not a traditional editorial team, but a decentralized approach, with several external collaborators, allowing the company to realign itself in the event of major changes. But it’s clear that the situation is unsustainable in the long run . A solution must be found that restores the natural balance between major platforms, namely Google, and the publishing industry.
But which one? Aranzulla himself admits that it may be too late: politicians have failed to anticipate and navigate the changes. A possible breakthrough, however, could come from a new monetization system that rewards websites whenever their content is used to generate text with AI.
There are already artificial intelligence models based on this idea. Access is monitored, and a fee is paid for each access block. It’s an ideal solution, especially since maintaining a site has its costs, and if bots run it instead of people, the mechanism isn’t effective.
the entrepreneur explained to Fanpage.
It’s also in the interests of the companies that manage AI: today, Gemini and ChatGPT provide answers based on information published online. But if publishing that information—thus those articles—is no longer profitable, who will continue to do so? “If no one is interested in producing that content anymore, what will those answers be based on?” Aranzulla asks.
