In this case a majority of the traffic certainly came from Google. If all social media and search engines vanished (including the suggested site feature on safari) for a few hours, we’d definitely see traffic to news sites go down.

I guess that says something about the difficulty of discoverability on the internet.

Most people are probably aware of the names of several major news organisations in their country or city, but it's less obvious what the domain name should be - what is written in full? what is abbreviated?

If you prohibit the use of a lookup system (that's what you did, effectively), some people will be able remember the domain name (it's easier than a telephone number), but it's not hard to guess people will find the system much less useful.

It's a little like saying "if everyone had to use a CLI to start the programs they want to use on their phone, more people would watch TV".