{"id":4900,"date":"2026-03-21T07:03:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=4900"},"modified":"2026-03-21T07:03:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:03:20","slug":"yahoo-ceo-google-ai-mode-is-the-biggest-threat-to-web-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=4900","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo CEO: Google AI Mode is the biggest threat to web traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p> <div id=\"articleContent\" itemprop=\"articlebody\"> <div class=\"bialty-container\"> <p>Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone said AI-powered search \u2014 especially Google\u2019s AI Mode \u2014 is putting the open web\u2019s core traffic model at risk and argues AI search engines must send users back to publishers.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cI think that the LLMs are one big reason that they\u2019re under threat, with AI Mode in Google being the biggest challenge.\u201d<\/li> <li>\u201cThose publishers deserve [traffic], and we\u2019re not going to have the content to consume to give great answers if publishers aren\u2019t healthy.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p><strong>Why we care.<\/strong> Many websites are seeing less traffic from answer engines like Google and OpenAI \u2014 and I think it\u2019ll only get worse. So it\u2019s encouraging to see Yahoo trying to preserve the \u201csearch sends traffic\u201d model. As he said: \u201cWe have very purposefully highlighted and linked very explicitly and bent over backwards to try to send more traffic downstream to the people who created the content.\u201d<\/p> <p><strong>Yahoo\u2019s AI stance<\/strong>. Yahoo is taking a different approach from chatbot-style interfaces, Lanzone said on the Decoder podcast. He added that Yahoo isn\u2019t trying to compete as a full AI assistant:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cOurs looks a lot more like traditional search and it is more paragraph-driven. It\u2019s not a chatbot that\u2019s trying to act like it\u2019s a person and be your friend.\u201d<\/li> <li>\u201cWe\u2019re not a large language model. We\u2019re not going to be the place you come to code. We\u2019ve really launched Scout as an answer engine.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p><strong>What\u2019s next: Personalization + agentic actions<\/strong>. Yahoo plans to expand Scout beyond basic answers and is embedding AI across its ecosystem:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cYou are very shortly going to see us get into very personalized results. You\u2019re going to see us get into very agentic actions that you can take.\u201d<\/li> <li>\u201cThere\u2019s a button in Yahoo Finance that does analysis of a given stock on the fly\u2026 It is in Yahoo Mail to help summarize and process emails.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p><strong>Yahoo vs. Google isn\u2019t a thing. <\/strong>Yahoo isn\u2019t trying to win by converting Google users directly. Instead, Yahoo is prioritizing its existing audience and increasing usage frequency over immediate market share gains:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cNobody chooses, you will not be surprised, Yahoo over Google or somewhere else to search. The way that we get our search volume is because we have 250 million US users and 700 million global users in the Yahoo network at any given time. There\u2019s a search box there. And infrequently, they use it.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p><strong>A warning.<\/strong> Companies \u2014 including publishers \u2014 should be cautious about relying too heavily on AI platforms as intermediaries. Lanzone compared today\u2019s AI partnerships to Yahoo\u2019s past reliance on Google:<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li>\u201cYou are tempting fate by opening up a way for consumers to access your product within a large language model.\u201d<\/li> <li>\u201cThe big bad wolf will come to your door and say everything\u2019s cool.\u201d<\/li> <\/ul> <p><strong>The interview.<\/strong> Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on reviving the web\u2019s homepage<\/p> <\/div> <hr\/> <p class=\"article-disclosure\"> <em>Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page\u2019s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.<\/em> <\/p> <hr\/> <div class=\"author-about py-4\"> <div class=\"card bg-light\"> <div class=\"row gx-0\"> <div class=\"col-12 col-lg-auto\"> <div class=\"authorImage p-2\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid rounded avatar-border\" alt=\"Danny Goodwin\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2024\/07\/Danny-Goodwin-scaled.jpeg.webp\" title=\"Yahoo CEO: Google AI Mode is the biggest threat to web traffic\u63d2\u56fe\" \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid rounded avatar-border\" src=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/wp-content\/seloads\/2024\/07\/Danny-Goodwin-scaled.jpeg.webp\" alt=\"Danny Goodwin\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\" title=\"Yahoo CEO: Google AI Mode is the biggest threat to web traffic\u63d2\u56fe1\" \/> <\/div> <\/p><\/div> <div class=\"col-12 col-lg\"> <div class=\"card-body author-body p-2\"> <div id=\"authorBio-23878\" class=\"author-desc\"> <p>Danny Goodwin is Editorial Director of Search Engine Land &amp; Search Marketing Expo &#8211; SMX. He joined Search Engine Land in 2022 as Senior Editor. In addition to reporting on the latest search marketing news, he manages Search Engine Land\u2019s SME (Subject Matter Expert) program. He also helps program U.S. SMX events. <\/p> <p>Goodwin has been editing and writing about the latest developments and trends in search and digital marketing since 2007. He previously was Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal (from 2017 to 2022), managing editor of Momentology (from 2014-2016) and editor of Search Engine Watch (from 2007 to 2014). He has spoken at many major search conferences and virtual events, and has been sourced for his expertise by a wide range of publications and podcasts.<\/p> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/p><\/div> <\/div> <p> <!-- START SIDEBAR LOWER SPACE --><\/p> <p><!-- END SIDEBAR LOWER SPACE --><\/p><\/div> <p>News#Yahoo #CEO #Google #Mode #biggest #threat #web #traffic1774047800<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone said AI-powered search \u2014 especially Google\u2019s AI Mode \u2014 is putting the open web\u2019s core traffic model at risk and argues AI search engines must send users back to publishers. \u201cI think that the LLMs are one big reason that they\u2019re under threat, with AI Mode in Google being the biggest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[2377,735,75,1561,83,377,441,345,6600],"class_list":["post-4900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-careers","tag-biggest","tag-ceo","tag-google","tag-mode","tag-news","tag-threat","tag-traffic","tag-web","tag-yahoo"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}