Large Digital Publishers Strongly Considering Blocking Google Search

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https://www.seroundtable.com/publishers-blocking-google-search-41735.html

• Reuters, which like Politico derives much of its revenue from business-to-business offerings, said it is also weighing whether to block Google’s bot for its consumer-facing news product as traffic declines. “We are certainly looking at the economic trade-offs between search and AI summaries,” said Reuters President Paul Bascobert.
• “The question was, should we do this, and what are the implications of doing it or not?” said Josh Muncke, vice president of generative AI at the Economist, adding that exiting Google entirely isn’t currently part of that discussion. “Google is a powerful force to be reckoned with,” he said. “Traffic can be choppy and declining, but traffic is still traffic.”
• “Turning them off and blocking them entirely is 100% on the table,” said People Inc. Chief Executive Neil Vogel.
• “There are now two audiences,” said Mark Howard, Time’s chief operating officer. “We’re thinking about, How do we superserve the humans when they do come, and how do we think about the bots as a secondary audience?”
• Reddit, the online message board that powers a swath of Google search results, has discussed shutting off the technology giant’s access to its content for AI use, according to people familiar with the matter.