Google's Relationship With the Web Is Getting Complicated

Two stories broke this week that look unrelated. One is about a handful of major publishers rethinking their relationship with Google. The other is about a technical quirk that can push a page out of Google's index without anyone touching the content. Put together, they say something about where things stand right now, on both the business side and the technical side.

Publishers are questioning the trade

Several major US publishers, including USA Today, Politico, Reuters and Reddit, are weighing whether to block Google's crawler from their sites altogether. The logic is straightforward: AI Overviews and AI-generated summaries are answering more searches directly, so fewer people click through to the original source. USA Today's chief executive has described the moment as one where publishers need to stop tolerating an arrangement that increasingly benefits Google more than it benefits them. Reddit's own commercial deal with Google is also due for renewal, which adds another layer to the story.

None of this means these publishers will actually cut ties. Most still depend on Google for a meaningful share of their traffic, and there is no obvious replacement for it. But the fact that household names are seriously discussing it is a signal in itself. If the biggest, best resourced publishers online are questioning how much they can rely on Google, it is worth every smaller business asking the same question about its own visibility.

A technical issue that costs you visibility without you noticing

The second story is smaller in scale but arguably more useful to know about if you run a website. Google's John Mueller recently explained that if a site's bot protection shows a "prove you're human" screen to Googlebot instead of the real page, and that screen returns a normal response code, Google can end up indexing the check screen rather than the actual content. Because the same generic check screen appears on many different sites, Google can treat them as duplicates and decide another site's version is the "canonical" one, effectively replacing that page in its results.

The awkward part is that this is invisible from the inside. Regular visitors never see it, because the check only triggers for traffic that looks automated, so the site looks completely normal when you check it yourself. The only way to catch it is by looking at Search Console's Page Indexing report or running the URL Inspection tool, and asking whoever manages your security, CDN or hosting to confirm Googlebot isn't being caught by rules meant for bad traffic.

What this means in practice

Neither story is really about algorithms. They are both about how much control you actually have over your own visibility, and how much of it sits with systems and relationships outside your direct view.

The practical takeaway is twofold. First, if most of your traffic still comes from one channel you do not control, this is a reasonable moment to think about where else people might find you, whether that is a direct relationship like an email list, presence in AI-generated answers, or simply a stronger case for why someone should come back to you directly rather than search again. Second, it is worth an occasional health check on the basics: confirming nothing in your security setup is quietly blocking the crawlers you actually want, before it costs you rankings you never knew you lost.