Small businesses are being cut out of Google search. Here’s the workaround

Let's not sugarcoat it: the open web is quietly dying, and artificial intelligence is holding the smoking gun. Type a question into Google these days and there's a good chance you'll get your answer without ever leaving the results page. No click, no visit, no chance for a small business to make its case. Data from analytics firm Chartbeat, reported by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, found that Google search traffic to over 2,500 news sites worldwide fell 33% in a single year. Independent studies from Pew Research and Ahrefs put the click-through hit on any page ranking below an AI Overview at anywhere from 35% to 58%. That's not a dip. That's a structural shift, and technology firms are the ones pushing it. For a small Irish business that's poured money into a website – the digital shopfront that's supposed to turn curiosity into customers – this should be genuinely alarming. But what can you actually do about it? A few things, and none of them involve sitting around hoping Google changes its mind.