Google has begun an experiment to pay publishers for materials used to generate artificial intelligence answers in searches. However, early results from the program have raised questions: Small and medium-sized sites are making too little money to make up for the drop in search traffic brought on by artificial intelligence.
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according to technical art refer to informationGoogle has connected about 100 publishers to a program called the AI Contribution Pilot. Participants will be compensated if their contributions significantly impact Gemini’s AI overview responses. At the same time, Google had not previously considered the possibility of paying directly for content use, believing that websites would receive traffic from search engines in return.
Several small and medium-sized publishers told The Information that the fee represents about 0.1% of their advertising revenue, while some large publishers have refused to participate entirely, hoping to get better terms from Google. However, the amounts vary widely. For example, one of the program participants is expected to make more than $1 million per year, while the most recent site is making about $60,000, which is only a small portion of their revenue. Small websites receive less than $1,000 in revenue in a few months.
Participants in the experiment noted that material on niche topics (anime and games) with fewer publications generated higher revenues due to a smaller audience reach. Meanwhile, statistics in Google Search Console remain opaque, and publishers can’t always determine why they received a specific amount. The company also didn’t explain in enough detail what was considered a significant contribution to the AI response, making it difficult for the site to predict future spending.
For Google, the problem goes beyond a single experiment, as AI models draw knowledge from vast amounts of web data and the search engine still needs new relevant web content. If a website stops publishing material or starts blocking access to Google search bots, this could also impact the quality of AI searches. At the same time, some publishers have begun to actively oppose Google’s transition to artificial intelligence-based search. In particular, the New York Times sued over the illegal use of its material to train models, while Penske Media, which owns Variety and Rolling Stone, accused Google of unfairly combining regular search indexing with artificial intelligence data collection.
Regulators are also watching the situation. In the UK, Google was previously required to give publishers the opportunity to opt out of using content in AI searches without losing their presence in organic search results, and the European Commission is conducting an antitrust investigation into compensating publishers for using their content in AI responses.
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