armenpress.am For more than a few decades, digital media and search engines operated through a simple chain. Information was published on a website, and in the case of a few words searched, the search engine would offer a list of links, the reader would click on their preferred link, visit the site, and perhaps read other materials there as well:
Each link in this chain had its value. Visibility turned into visits, visits into an audience, and the audience into revenue, subscriptions, or other types of relationships. The foundation of this entire system was a simple model: a person had to visit your site for you to convert their attention into value. Today, that mechanism operates under a different logic: search engines are increasingly trying not just to find and display the source of information but to directly answer the user's question.
Artificial intelligence-powered systems can gather facts from various sources, combine them, and present a single comprehensive answer without forcing the user to visit the original source's site. As a result, a new situation is formed: journalism can reach the reader without bringing them to the media's site.
This is the most significant consequence of "zero-click" information dissemination. And its impact is much greater than the decrease in visits; the model of the relationship between media and audience, on which a significant part of the digital media economy has been built over the past decades, is changing. And here the most important question is: what happens after this new model of "meeting" between the reader and information? The reader needs not only to be found but also to be "brought back." When talking about this change, the numbers express the situation more vividly.
An article published by PPC Land states that in July 2026, according to Similarweb, the 100 largest media organizations in the U.S. spent about $113 million on paid search. This expenditure has increased by 41 percent over the year, and compared to July 2023, it has risen by 274 percent. The number of visits obtained from paid search amounted to 23.7 million, increasing by 39 percent compared to the previous year. Behind the numbers lies a rather strange picture: media outlets have been trying for years to get search engines to bring readers to them.
And now some major media publishers are paying more and more money to receive visits through search. And this rapid increase in spending is happening at a time when the search environment is radically changing, and the old way of reaching the reader is no longer as predictable. A person reads, but you do not see them. Here, the idea of "zero-click" search becomes more interesting than just a technical term. A person can read the result of your journalism, but you may not see them.
They may know the facts you have gathered but not enter your site. They may even use an answer based on your journalist's work and not know that a specific media outlet is behind that work. This situation is particularly interesting for media because the media can lose not just one visit. It can lose the reader's path to itself. When a person enters a site, the media has the opportunity to build a relationship with them. They can read one article, then another, subscribe, join a newsletter, download the app, or simply return the next day. If all the information is provided to the person by another system, the first and most important part of that relationship occurs in someone else's space.
That is why the issue is much larger than the statistics of site visits. The media is already beginning to change its behavior. A survey conducted by Digiday and Arc XP, involving 85 media organizations, publishers, shows how media outlets are trying to adapt to this change. 76 percent of respondents noted that they observe a trend of receiving information in a pre-summarized form.
61 percent noticed a decrease in direct visits to the site, while 47 percent stated that AI search has already affected visits coming from other platforms to their sites. Therefore, media outlets are trying to ensure their presence not only in search results. The same survey shows that media are already changing various levels of their work. 85 percent of respondents are adjusting their content approaches so that materials are more easily discoverable, correctly perceived, and used as sources by AI systems, while 76 percent have already changed the structure of their content and SEO approaches to improve its visibility in search and AI systems.
At the same time, 62 percent are collaborating with AI search companies, while 76 percent are licensing or providing their content to AI platforms. Interest in proprietary platforms is also increasing. 67 percent of media have increased their presence on social networks, and 52 percent have increased investments in publishing newsletters, apps, and podcasts. Media seem to understand that it is no longer sufficient to simply be where people search.
There must also be a connection with the reader that does not depend on someone else's search. The question is not just technological. All of this could be limited to the relationships between media and technology companies. But there is another change that is more human. A person not only searches with artificial intelligence systems but also talks to them, asks questions, sometimes expresses gratitude, and sometimes returns to the same conversation. In other words, what was initially created as a tool can gradually become part of human daily behavior. And it is here that one of the latest studies adds an interesting new layer to this entire story. When a chatbot is not just a tool. The authors of a study published in the journal Technology in Society in August, Genya Kostkan and Hui Zhou, examined 7,027 people from Germany, China, South Africa, and the U.S.
One of the aims of the study was to understand what kind of relationship people are forming with general-purpose chatbots, including systems like ChatGPT and DeepSeek. The authors explored the prevalence of emotional attachment to chatbots, the factors that shape it, and its consequences. The results are interesting: 48.06 percent of chatbot users perceive the system as a friend. 61.69 percent noted that they use polite expressions, such as thank you. 35.05 percent said they miss the chatbot after not using it for a few days. 39.57 percent indicated that these conversations reduce feelings of loneliness. 57.27 percent stated that they feel free from others' judgment when interacting with the chatbot, while 67.55 percent feel a certain level of personal space or privacy. Perhaps one of the most interesting figures is this: 20.94 percent prefer to share their deepest secret with a chatbot rather than with friends, family members, or other trusted individuals.
Of course, these figures do not allow us to conclude that people are ready to replace their human relationships with artificial intelligence. The study itself does not make such a simple conclusion. On the contrary, the authors found that people with more extensive social interactions may also exhibit stronger attachment to chatbots. According to their commentary, the connection formed with artificial intelligence can, in some cases, complement human relationships rather than simply replace them. This finding is important for another reason. It shows that the power of artificial intelligence is not just that it is fast. It is accessible, does not get tired, does not interrupt. It can continue the same conversation. And for some people, it creates an environment where they feel freer. These very characteristics also become important from the perspective of information consumption. When a person asks, "What happened today?", "What does this statement mean?", "What is happening in this country?", "What is the difference between these two viewpoints?", artificial intelligence stops being just a new form of search. It becomes an intermediary for information. And here, the most important question for media may not be how many people have seen its headline, but whether you have appeared where a person is searching for information. What should the media do? The answer to this question cannot be just, "We need to do better SEO."
At the same time, it is necessary to reconsider the metrics by which audience growth is assessed. Alongside site visits, the number of returning readers, direct visits, subscriptions, newsletter and app usage, as well as how often the media appears in AI systems' responses as a source, become more important. In other words, it is necessary to build several pathways simultaneously through which the reader can find, use, and return to the same media outlet. And at the core of the content remains the same requirement: to be verified, accurate, and have a clear source. The spread of AI does not change that standard, but it changes the environment in which their results must be accessible and recognizable.
* This text was automatically translated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
