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Google’s AI Mode: How to adapt your app growth strategy

SEO experts fear Google’s AI Mode will decimate traffic to publishers. We outline how to adapt, especially in driving app downloads.

30th May 2025

Google's CEO Sundar Pichai announced the launch of AI Mode at its IO conference in May 2025 Photo courtesy of Google

Google announced AI mode at its recent flagship IO conference for 2025, and SEO and publishing professionals fear it will upend search as publishers have known it and put additional pressure on referrals and traffic-based publishing businesses.

Instead of a list of blue links, which has become the standard way that most internet users seek information, AI Mode’s “Deep Search” will “issue hundreds of searches, reason across disparate pieces of information, and create an expert-level fully-cited report in just minutes, saving you hours of research”, Google said.

At the moment, AI mode has only been rolled out to US users, and it currently exists in its own tab, but SEO experts expect it to become the default Google interface soon.

Based on industry data and survey results for our upcoming State of Mobile Publishing report, AI summaries have already reduced search referrals for publishers. AI mode is expected to put even more pressure on search as a source of traffic to publishers. News-focused SEO expert Barry Adams wrote on LinkedIn that the impact of AI mode is clear: “In the next few years, many publishers will be unable to survive.”

What does this mean for publishers’ apps?

Building direct relationships with audiences through your own properties, including apps, becomes even more important.
Publishers should sharpen effective strategies to drive downloads through editorial newsletters as well as registration and subscription onboarding.
Search will change, but the changes will reward high-quality, original content.

If you want to talk to our app experts and other publishers about these changes, join Mobile Matters, our community for publishing professionals. It’s a great place to discuss how to increase app downloads and engagement. Go here to join.

Also, for Pugpig publishers, David Buttle will discuss Google’s AI developments in detail on our next publisher check-in on Tuesday, 24th June. Register here to join us.

Kevin & James

AI Mode and its possible impact on publishers

By Kevin Anderson

AI mode goes far beyond returning search results with links to pages or even Google’s current AI summaries. As part of his post-IO interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, The Verge’s Nilay Patel said AI Mode returns “a custom search results page, including interactive charts and potentially other kinds of apps, in real time”.

“What does it mean for the web to go from a series of websites when AI tools just see it as a series of databases instead of as sites for people to use?” he asks.

AI summaries and algorithm changes have already battered some publishers, and overall, click-throughs on search results have declined by 30% in the past year, according to research by BrightEdge. SEO experts say AI Mode will have a much bigger impact on publishers.

“The damage AI Mode will cause to the publishing industry will be felt for decades to come.” Barry Adams said.

The News Media Alliance had a vehement response. “Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue. Now, Google takes content by force and uses it with no return, no economic return. That’s the definition of theft.”

How publishers can respond to this change

Ouch. What can publishers do?

Google Discover offers hope – It is coming to desktop users, and overall, publishers have seen it overtake traditional search as a source of traffic, even if they struggle to develop tactics to deliver consistent traffic from it.
Rethink e-commerce or affiliate marketing strategies – One bright spot for national news brands and consumer magazines has become e-commerce. However, other aspects of Google’s new AI services, including its live search, personalisation with user purchase data and “agentic shopping”, will disrupt this line of business.
Brand building becomes critical – During the platform era, the volume of referrals was the metric publishers cared about the most. However, too often, referrals became a vanity metric that replaced genuine brand awareness. Building a strong brand is critical for publishers’ survival.
Direct relationships with audiences become critical – The shift to reader revenue, both subscriptions and memberships, has become the bedrock of sustainable media businesses. Reader revenue models require differentiated, original content and products that build loyalty and habit, such as newsletters, podcasts and apps. Google’s new suite of AI products reinforces the importance of this strategic shift and all of the tactics that build habits and loyalty that go with it.

Pivot to loyal audience vs traffic strategies

Apart from major changes to SEO strategies, “(p)ublishers need to focus on audience strategies that exclude Google as a reliable source. The emphasis needs to be on non-Google channels, multimedia content, and direct brand traffic,” Barry said.

AI summaries are already affecting traffic-based publishers or publishers with traffic-based verticals as part of their overall strategy.

Business Insider is a case in point. As news of AI Mode rumbled through the industry, the digital publisher announced it was laying off 21% of its staff. In the announcement, CEO Barbara Peng said the job cuts target the 70% of its business with “some degree of traffic sensitivity”. The company expects “extreme traffic drops outside of our control” and “we’re scaling back on categories that once performed well on other platforms but no longer drive meaningful readership,” she added.

Instead, the company will focus on content that engages loyal audiences and drives subscriptions. They will expand their events business, which drives revenue and deepens relationships with audiences.

How to adapt your app growth strategies

As we wrote recently, the New York Times believes that the “clock is ticking” on traffic referrals from search and social, and they think their app plays a major role in responding to this change, Emily Withrow, Vice President of Product and Head of Subscriber Experiences, told the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress.

The search changes will mostly affect content discovery, but in our State of Mobile Publishing survey, search was listed as the second biggest driver of app downloads. Here is how to continue to grow users of your app in the face of these changes:

Three of the top four tactics to increase app downloads are still in publishers’ control. Editorial newsletters topped the list of app growth drivers in our survey, and registration and subscription onboarding came in third, with paid marketing coming in fourth. Lean into these efforts as search becomes less reliable a driver of growth.
Use social platforms to drive users to your owned properties, through newsletter sign-ups, contests and other ways to convert unknown audiences to known users.
Google and Facebook have closed the spigot on free referrals, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use their incredible targeting capabilities for paid campaigns to drive audiences to your newsletters, podcasts, sites, events and apps.
For app publishers with a mobile web reader, some Pugpig customers have used a pop-up or banner to drive users to the app.

Fundamentally, with the collapse of social and search as a free driver of traffic, publishers should redouble their efforts to own the relationship with their audiences.

Pugpig News

AJC News app, powered by Pugpig, wins Best New Digital Product and Best in North America at INMA Global Media Awards 2025

Many congratulations to Pugpig publisher, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), on being named winner of both Best New Digital Product and overall Best in North America awards at this year’s INMA Global Media Awards. These prestigious accolades are a huge testament to AJC’s bold vision to transform a 155-year-old newspaper into a modern, digital-first media powerhouse. And the AJC News app, built on Pugpig Bolt, playing such a central role in that journey.

Come along to the Publisher App Summit

We’re kicking off day two of the Publisher App Summit (hosted by our friends at Media Voices) this year on Wednesday, 11 June. We’ll be diving into the key findings from our not-yet-published 2025 State of Mobile Publishing report. You don’t want to miss it – let us know if you’re interested in coming along.

We will also be hosting a workshop about mobile messaging strategy based on our report, The Art of the Nudge: Perfecting Push in 2025. We will be joined by our report partners PushPushGo, and cover tactics to achieve the best results for push notifications, including different ways to target audiences with the most relevant push messages.

Accountancy Ireland launches mobile app on Pugpig Bolt

The members’ magazine of Chartered Accountants Ireland and the leading journal for the accountancy profession in Ireland has launched their app on Pugpig Bolt. Complete with crisp digital editions and rich multimedia capabilities, their mobile content is more engaging than ever before. Read more here.

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