AI-driven search is upending traditional information channels and heating up businesses and organizations facing web traffic freefall.
Survival instinct has businesses rushing to shift their web strategies. Perhaps it will end the days of the open internet as we know it.
After decades of pursuing web optimization strategies that drive mass content generation, many companies now feel that their content marketing strategies may backfire.
just from $107.88 $24.99 at Kiplinger Personal Finance
Become a smarter, better-informed investor.
Click on the free question
Sign up for Kiplinger's free newsletter
Remember to profit and prosper with expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more – straight to your email.
Profit and prosper with the best expert advice – straight to your email.
Kiplinger Advisors Intel, formerly known as Wealth Building, is a curated network of trusted financial experts who share expert insights on building and preserving wealth. Contributors, including fiduciary financial planners, wealth managers, CEOs, and attorneys, offer practical advice on retirement planning, estate planning, tax strategy, and more. Experts are invited to contribute and are not paid for inclusion, so you can trust their advice to be honest and valuable.
cut out the deal
High-value, high-authority content that was used to promise better page rankings on Google, Bing, or Brave is now used to train their respective artificial intelligence models (Gemini, ChatGpt, Humanity, etc.).
Businesses feel cut out of the deal. And their web traffic is proof that those sentiments aren't misplaced.
Following the release of Google's search generation experience two years ago, websites saw their website traffic drop by as much as 56%, according to Search Engine Land, while others reported it to be as high as 60%.
Meanwhile, the number of news-related searches on ChatGPT has increased by 212% in the past 18 months, according to a Simorweb report.
Without the incentives of web clicks and ad revenue to fuel content creation, the foundation of the web as a free and open entity is being questioned.
Websites, organizations, newsletters, and companies that create content and information that users want have less reason to open the gates on their content to AI models that appear to be abusing them.
Take a fresh look at your web strategy
Businesses that have seen their web traffic collapse are reevaluating their web strategies. How do we survive in a world where the use of AI is increasing and seemingly driving?
Two things may be true at once:
- Opting out of the AI economy completely would be disastrous for businesses
- Companies that freely feed the AI beast may be contributing to their own demise
It's a catch-22. If companies start firewalling from AI, they miss the opportunity for AI to recognize them and serve them content and services.
If they do nothing, these large language models (LLMs) can continue to cannibalize expertise without companies seeing any benefit.
The tension in this dynamic could change the structure and fundamental economics of the Internet as we know it.
Given what we know about the internet, capitalism, and how some major corporations are handling this fallout, there are three content futures that businesses can start preparing for.
1. Microtransaction/compensation model
According to a report from CNBC, new york timesaxios and vanity fair We were able to establish a financial partnership with an AI company that allows us to train and make reports available to our users. Such partnerships are not available to all content creators on the Internet.
That's why companies like CloudFlare have recently announced that they will block AI crawlers until the company is fairly compensated. This could turn AI into a space dominated by microtransactions, potentially allowing companies to pay each time content is served to users.
2. walled internet
Alternatively, companies can choose to shut everything down, killing the oxygen that feeds the LLMS and forcing paid interactions.
It's not a new concept. Industry associations have long used gated materials as a membership sales tool.
By offering free samples of content, companies can potentially train their AI while gaining a more cost-effective audience in the process.
3. Winner Takes All AI Landscapes
Finally, there is a future of easy winners where AI platforms remove all ambiguity from answers and only serve specific partner sites to users.
This is a pay model that favors large companies, not unlike the dynamics that have taken over Google's search results in recent years.
The key for businesses to understand is that the future of AI is still very much unfolding around us.
Looking for expert tips to grow and maintain your wealth? sign up advisor intel (formerly known as Building Wealth), our free twice-weekly newsletter.
Disconcertingly, as web traffic collapses, click-through rates and web visitors are no longer the indicators of success they once were. In most cases, a small number of users account for the majority of a company's transactional success.
What business can do
Your old user number is gone. They're never coming back – and there's little business owners can do about it.
Instead, companies should focus on controlling what they can control and avoid falling into the trap of believing that any one AI web solution is a clear right or the only one.
The best AI business plans for the future are nimble and unafraid to try, fail, adapt, and try again.
Here's what business owners can do:
- Test specific queries and prompts monthly across each LLM to see your business rank. Tools like Semrush, Ahrefs can help with this.
- Adjust content between each benchmark to see what helps and hurts. Remember, the AI is not based too much on any one instance, as it is do not have Give the same answer every time.
- If you rank well, don't assume you always will. As we've learned with SEO, it's always evolving. A #1 rank today does not guarantee a #1 rank tomorrow.
- Share and reuse content. Analyze and share it with your partners, social media, directories, and many other channels.
To reach customers without relying on search results, you can double down on channels you own, including your website, email lists, text messaging, streaming, events, and direct customer interactions.
Now more than ever, there is an opportunity to build direct relationships at a greater level of scale. Don't abandon it to AI or other intermediary channels.
Beware of trend waves and hype bubbles
AI, like everything else today, is susceptible to trend waves and hype bubbles. As an example, consider the role of “prompt engineer”. This is the anti-AI job that everyone was told to hire two years ago. Now, those roles are essentially gone, if they ever existed.
This remains the case today, according to a report from the Capgemini Research Instiutute.
By understanding what a fully optimized AI-Future looks like, you can test your framework for bouncing ideas into your business. They were able to test what worked and what didn't – without missing out on what was happening right now.
Nothing is certain. Multi-pronged preparedness and contingency planning can help businesses succeed no matter what their future ventures are.
Related content
This article presents and represents the opinions of its contributors and not of Kiplinger's editorial staff. You can check your advisor record at seconds or finra.
