It’s not just you.
And it’s not just your pageviews.
Chartbeat analyzed years of its platform’s data for the 2026 Publisher Playbook, finding that Google Search’s ability to generate pageviews dropped 21.9% YoY from July 2024 to July 2025, with referrals dropping a further 40.2% YoY from July 2025 to this past July.
(Photo Source: Chartbeat)
“Internal traffic continues to generate the largest share of pageviews at 40.4%, with direct traffic following at 15.4%,” the report says. “Search, as we’ve reported previously, continues a downward trend. Google Search made up about 9% of pageviews in July 2024 and fell to 5% in July 2026, a relative drop of almost 46% in two years. Google Discover fell 28.4% over the same stretch.”
Looking at growth, the report found dark social channels — that is, traffic from emails, texts, and other direct messages that are more difficult to track — saw a 4.2% growth over that two-year span, as did direct traffic (2.4%) and internal traffic (2.5%).
“Dark social, direct, and internal traffic … are more indicative of readers forming trust and loyalty,” the report says. “They’ve decided that the content is worth sharing privately, the URL is worth bookmarking, and the breadth of content is worth clicking deeper into a site. … Fortunately, the channels that are growing are the ones that media companies have more control over.”
Publishers — how are you taking better control of your internal channels and pageview problems?