Zero Click Searches
AI is going to gut content creator revenue.
Google’s AI responses are eating into referral clicks. Instead of needing to look among those top few links to see if you’ve got an answer, the blue summary text at the top of the search page may do what you need.
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince goes in depth on what is happening. Basically it sounds like a market shake out - a lot of what is will simply evaporate, because it isn’t large enough or can’t move quickly enough. Eventually workable AI will need nothing but human curated/edited content to avoid becoming The Dead Internet.
A year ago I was Rushing Into Semrush, looking for that thing that would produce outside the bounds of influence ops. I would be perfectly happy to sell some widgets in order to score those all important Peruvian pesos, but I’ve not found the right situation yet. Semrush has some thoughts on Zero Click Searches, basically modifying how you present content in order to increase the likelihood of click through even in the Zero Click Search age.
We are fast approaching a point where humans are going to start shrugging off machine mediated reality in favor of authenticity. That was a theme in Kids Can’t Read, I’m personally not keen on this Substack Zombie Wave, and we saw The Dead Internet mentioned once already.
What is the solution? You’re gonna hate to hear this …
BLOCKCHAIN
If human content creators notarize their work via a blockchain, and content consumers filter against AI slop by insisting on notarization …
I’m already blocking YouTube slop channels and shunning the endless equivocation slop writing that’s infesting some corners of the internet. It will have to get bad enough that people will start insisting on authentic human sources.
How that happens in a post work economy is a mystery and it may just NOT happen … not without some enormous rupture of our social contract. If you’re having trouble imagining what that looks like, spend some time studying this photo of Mokhaim Al Yarmouk.
