This was a Talking Web newsletter on 28 July 2026 - join the newsletter here.

Hi,

I hope you’re surviving the juggle of the school summer holidays if you’re in that boat?! We’re managing here so far… but we were away last week so we’ve only just started really…

  • What’s happening in Search
  • What you need to think about
  • Where to start this week

​CNBC reported last week that Business Insider have reported a drop of more than 85% in the traffic Google sent them between June 2025 and June 2026. Meanwhile other sites like CNN have reported drops of around 25%.

Why? Well it’s largely “thanks” to AI… if people can see the answer to their query from Google’s AI overview, then they don’t need to click to visit.

It’s called a zero click search and the amount of them that are being carried out by consumers are going up and up.

There are a few things you can, or need to, do about this to stay ahead of the game (and your line manager if that’s the case).

Firstly, this week, decide if you actually need traffic.

I know that might sound silly, but lots of businesses don’t need traffic. They need customers.

The only people that really need traffic are ecommerce sites and publishers (news sites who make money from page impressions and sponsorships and ads).

Traffic actually is expensive. It’s what can cost you a lot to host your site if you get loads of traffic you don’t need.

If you need referrals, recommendations, and the people who are ready to buy filling in your contact form, then just make sure you’re still getting found and still getting referrals.

If people are reading about you in an AI overview and only visiting once, to get intouch, rather than 4 times to read your services page first, then great! Nothing lost.

But what you might need to do – especially if you’re in a marketing role – is have some benchmarks and metrics in place to confirm that all is OK.

If you have to give regular reports to someone about the website’s performance, or you’re a dilligent website owner / business founder who wants to make sure your ship is water tight, then consider what you currently record and report on, and what you could report on instead.

Fewer visitors might not matter if the ones who do visit are more engaged and stay for longer.

Are your engagement rates up? Are your contact form submissions or bookings steady or up?

Is there anything you need to change on your website so as to get the metrics you need to measure? (We recently added some new funnel pages for a client so that if someone gets in touch, the marketing team can prove that person came via the website rather than just landing in the sales team’s lap.)

Stop and think about what metrics are actually important for your business and pivot your reporting now to reflect that so that if you do find traffic numbers start to slip, you know what’s really happening and whether it is something to worry about or if actually, everything’s a-ok.

Sorry – that got a little long! – but it’s just about thinking now so that as things shift, you’re clear on where you stand.

OK thanks folks, speak soon!

Lisa

Lisa Freeman

​18a Web development​

​https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisafreemanweb