Traffic from Google search to Ziff Davis sites shrank by roughly 37% compared with a year earlier, Vivek Shah, the CEO, said on the quarterly earnings call held Nov. 6. The publisher is not planning for a rebound. Search Engine Journal covered the call on Nov. 9.
A year before, the same quarter saw a decline of about 23%, he said. Together, the two periods add up to a decline of more than 50% over two years. Both figures come from the call, not from a filing.
Shah also cited a Search Console number. Ziff Davis’ digital media sites logged about 2.7 billion impressions across AI Overviews and AI Mode in the quarter, which by his estimate is close to ten times the clicks the sites got from Google Search. He said the company is “not planning on a search recovery” and anticipates further declines.
The ratio needs care. Google’s help pages say the generative AI report counts how many times a site’s links showed up in those two features, and those impressions sit inside the site’s total Search impressions. Clicks on links within AI Overviews or AI Mode, meanwhile, count toward the site’s overall click total. Google lists no separate AI click count as of Nov. 8.
The source of Shah’s click total went unstated. If it came from Search Console, it covers clicks from AI Overviews, from AI Mode, and from every other result type. That means the 10x figure sets AI impressions against all Search clicks. Nobody should quote it as the click-through rate of AI features.
Revenue held up better than traffic. Third-quarter revenue fell 5.6% to $289.3 million, a drop Shah tied to businesses that do not depend on Google, such as subscriptions and apps. Tech and shopping revenue fell 3.8% to $82 million, and Shah said the shortfall has been shrinking for three quarters running. He named those brands as facing the strongest search headwinds in the portfolio.
IGN, the largest property by search referrals, has held up relatively well. Shah said much of its search traffic is game help that leans on maps, which are hard to duplicate. Gaming and entertainment revenue still fell 2.1%, which he linked to a weak gaming ad market ahead of Grand Theft Auto VI.
Shah’s AI Overview exposure estimates have shifted before. In November 2025, he put AI Overviews at 29% of the queries driving most of Ziff Davis’ traffic. In August, he said about 50% of relevant queries showed them, up from about 36%. No share came up on the Nov. 6 call.
On monetization, Shah called earning from content in AI answers “the priority” and said Ziff Davis is open to licensing deals. He expects its pending lawsuit against OpenAI to help clarify the market. In his words, “there is a gap between usage and monetization.”
The method matters beyond Ziff Davis. Any site with the generative AI report can run the same comparison, and a large publisher’s ratio now gives smaller teams a benchmark to place beside their own. Used loosely, it will overstate how often AI features lose clicks.
The next data point is the UK Competition and Markets Authority deadline of Dec. 3, by which Google must hand UK publishers impression, click, and click-through data for AI search features. Should Google break AI clicks out of the general Search total, publishers can finally set them against AI impressions. Until then, treat any AI click-through figure built from Search Console as an estimate, and log your own impressions and clicks quarterly so the Dec. 3 numbers have a baseline.
Search Engine Journal, Matt G. Southern, published November 9, 2026.
