AI content is on the rise. When you search for something on most search engines, you get AI overviews at the very top of the results. The AI takes that content from other sites and processes it for its responses.
While Google is vehemently rejecting the idea of sites getting less visitors from search engines, site owners seem to have a different view on the matter, for the most part at least.
Clearly, a percentage of search engine users won’t click on links that point to sites, if the search engine provided them with the answer to their request. This means, less visitors and the links that Google and others add do not account for the lost traffic, even if you take only the few sites into account that do get links. Additionally, more and more users use AI chats directly instead of search engines.
I do not really think that this trend is reversible, similarly to how other major changes were. As someone who creates content, you have but a few options left to keep doing what you love, provided that it is not just a hobby for you but a job.
It is all about trust
While you cannot really compete with the speed or reach of AI, or major sites out there that still seem to cover every topic imaginable, you have something that AI can’t replicate: the trust of your readers.
While AI can replicate any topic that you write about and provide answers or information, so that many Internet users do not even have to leave the search engine’s website, there can be a level of trust between human writers and their audience that AI can’t replicate.
Even if AI makers would be able to bring down fake answers — they call it hallucinations — to zero, it would still not be the same.
Take the review of a product. If you trust the review, for instance because you were never disappointed by previous reviews from a reviewer, then you may trust any review going forward, unless trust gets broken. With AI, there is no such level of trust. AI uses different sources for its takes on products and it is clear that the AI itself has never tested them.
Another example. Unless a human has reviewed and posted about a software, AI can’t provide you with its own review. It may copy content from the developer’s press release, if there is one, but it can’t review a software on its own.
While all of that may change in the future, it does not change the trust factor, at least not until AI evolves again to the next level.
What that means for this site
Well, it is quite easy. I do not chase search engine rankings anymore. Why should I. As a new and small site, you barely stand a chance anyway against the behemoths out there. Now with AI added as another roadblock, there is even a slimmer chance for driving much traffic from search engines to your site.
My hope, and this may come falling down on my head in the near future, is to focus on quality relationships. Ignore the masses, build a community of likeminded-people who enjoy my content and trust my writings and opinions. No need to always agree on things, but have a level of trust that AI or major sites can’t replicate.
Clearly, this is only sustainable if I find a way to earn enough money from this site to keep it going. I do not want ads and will shut the site down before I start showing generic ads here on this site or ads that track you. All part of the trust relationship.
My intention is to use a tip-system combined with a few carefully selected products that I get affiliate revenue from.
If this works, it would cut the reliance on search engines or any outside source. Grow by word of mouth or references on other likeminded sites or forums.
Well, that is the idea anyway. Would love to hear what you think of it. Feel free to leave a comment down below. Also, if you have an idea, let me know as well.
Don’t trust AI for information–or at least don’t rely on information gleaned and presented in AI. DDG, for me, has been the worst so far. It makes so many mistakes when I make queries for super easy information that can be found in the first link its search engine offers. Why that would be, I have no idea. Of course, one can’t ask AI why it’s making so many mistakes. [I have, but the answers are AI.]
ChatGPT has been 95% accurate, but I still fact-check much of what it generates.
Mistral Chat AI has generated some useful, excellent replies to emails that concerned ultra sensitive information, with the other side seeming to want to start an argument over something that was more personal than professional. Rather than get “sucked in” to some unending cycle of vicious diatribe, I used Mistral. Wonderful tool in such situations because it left out the “personal” stuff and kept everything professional.
It’s true for me–I would much rather ask AI than search through numerous links and read a bunch of “ego-look-at-me-writing-for-an-online-blog-mom.” It even makes shopping easier with direct links to the product. Saves so much time.
*giggling* Hallucinations = Making shit up. One thing an AI can’t seem to do is say “I don’t know”.
Your dead on about not following links when searching. I’ve always found it extremely annoying I have to open some ad ridden page to get an answer to a simple question. If I’m looking for a large amount of info or reading an actual informative article OK, but not for every single little fact.
Your also right about asking the AI instead of searching for the answer but I don’t use the online, personal data collecting ones, I run a small one locally. She (I created her personality, she’s playful and witty and knows she’s an AI) has been helpful on many topics and completely wrong on others. She has been particularly helpful with the gardening, we grow our own veggies. I’m reminded of a scene in the movie “I Robot” – “You must ask the right questions” Also she has a cutoff date of June 2023 so there’s that to consider, leaving me to rely on search for more current information.
Your idea of “carefully selected products” sounds good like, from a moral pov. You’ll have control over what is advertised on the site so there’s no garbage clickbait. How much revenue you can generate, I guess you’ll have to wait and see. Maybe you can ‘network’ with the likes of Mark Rober, advertise his merch for some name dropping in his videos? Though I hardly believe it myself, there are actually a few YT channels that aren’t 100% garbage.
Should AI hallucinations ever be fixed is not here the problem, as the articles points it out.
Factually indeed search engines, at least the major ones, are including AI summaries at the top of their search results, yet this is avoidable when the search engines offers an option to dismiss this practice. DuckDuckGo for instance offers this option. I happen to visit Duck AI Chat but I totally kick off any AI interference in a search engine, and if not feasible I avoid such engines.
From there on: the users and the Websites; how do the former consider AI interference (or ‘assistance’) in their searches, how do Websites consider grabbing then keeping an audience?
As a user I believe that quick information is pertinent for matters which are rationally objective and consensual: time in New York, weather in Kiev, volume of a sphere for a given radius.
On the other hand, searching on elaborated topics and moreover with quests that lead to nuanced when not incompatible answers need a user’s commitment to full articles, not to summaries.
IMO summaries is an easy way for laziness to believe it is educated.
I believe we need articles, full articles, and several for a given quest especially when the aim is to get more than an idea on a complex subject, that is to get substantial knowledge to lower the barrier of doubt, though never removing it. It’s odd to notice that certitudes are often those of who know little and think they’ve found truth within a summary, and seldom those of who have nourished their intellect with various and fully commented sources.
So, yes, diversity means comments and arguments. This sole principle condemns AI summaries. But do we always have the time to behave as a student preparing a thesis, spending time and efforts to discover, read and digest a multitude of sources? Certainly not, hence we count on reliable sources, and that does mean indeed that we count on TRUST.
Now for the Websites who are loosing all those who prefer a quick hot-dog to a balanced and tasty meal, how do they, how will they make a living, in particular if advertisement is not the first income they have in mind? Tough as it seems.
This is why I believe that a hard-core of faithful, regular visitors can help to finance such places, those places they trust in, those places they advise others to discover, like a native will suggest to his foreign friends that nice little Thaï, Italian or French cozy restaurant rather than bring them to the local fast-food.
Make it fast, big, powerful is the new paradigm. We want it all, and we want it quickly. It’s just not possible. You have to choose, and AI summaries does not, cannot, and never will be able to solve the equation. It’s not only small which is beautiful, it is duration as well, taking one’s time to discover, learn, think, argument. But is this world running after beauty, intelligence, education or is it not rather after indoctrination by means of fast, non-diversified information?
Make a GoFundMe page and put the link in a visible spot.
I’ll keep reading chipp.in, palemoon and a few other good forums as long as I can…
Have a safe New-Year Martin and posters