There are discussions here on HN where Google is juicing search growth by simply raising prices or doing shady things like getting rid of exact match. This can raise revenue temporarily but will lose long term.

Total human search volume has likely already started to decline.

Further more, we are at a point where searching in ChatGPT or AI apps is simply better and faster than Google.

In this new world, Google is not the leader nor a monopoly.

> Total human search volume has likely already started to decline.

source?

Here’s one: https://ppc.land/ziff-davis-loses-37-of-its-google-search-tr...

Because Google doesn’t break down search volume, we don’t know for sure.

thats proof that those sites are losing clicks, not that google is.

There are only two possible reasons:

1. Humans are searching less on Google.

2. Humans get the answer from Google AI answers at the top, which means AI is better at finding what the human wanted than traditional Google search results.

Both are bad for Google.

3. People are searching less for IGN and CNET

I think my two reasons are more likely.

Other sources:

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-decline-pu...

https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/07/search-traffic-has-decline...

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/randfishkin_google-search-tra...