Charities have seen a drop in organic growth in website traffic since the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered searches, but the sector is not as badly impacted as other industries.

Research into the website traffic of 800 organisations across 16 different sectors, after the rollout of Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, found that average monthly organic growth for charities fell from 15% last year to 12.5% this year.

However, researchers point out that charities are faring better than many other sectors, which have seen a far steeper decline in website traffic growth.

For example, the hospitality sector’s organic website traffic growth fell from 47.9% over the same period to -6.7%.

Other industries to see a steep decline since AI-powered searches began being widely used, include fashion, travel, finance and manufacturing.

Across all industries, average monthly traffic growth from 2024 to 2025 has dropped from 26.3% to just 3.7% - a growth difference of nearly 86%, points out digital marketing and PR agency Tank, which has carried out the research.

“Charity businesses have already shown resilience in keeping up with the shift to AI search, but there’s more to be done if we’re to keep traffic growing and donations flowing, said Martin Harris, Tank’s head of digital.

He said that “putting in a strategy on getting found - not just by search engines, but also by AI - is going to be essential” adding that “the silver lining of the shift to AI search is that those who do land on your website are likely to” be more interested in the organisation “than casual browsers”.

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