Google pays about 100 publishers for content in its AI answers

Sums vary widely. One early participant earns more than $1 million a year, a later entrant has collected $50,000 to $60,000, and several small sites received under $1,000 over several months. For small and midsize sites, the payments come to less than 0.1 per cent of their advertising revenue, PYMNTS reports.

The money follows generation. A page has to feed the model while it writes; backing up a claim afterwards, or sitting in the link list under a finished answer, pays nothing, PPC Land reports. Publishers see their total in Search Console but not which pages earned it or how Google worked it out. Some larger publishers have stayed out to push for better terms, PYMNTS reports.

For content sites and the marketers who fund them, Google now puts a price, however small, on a page that shapes an AI answer, whether or not anyone clicks.