The end of traffic towards your content

This is less structured and is a short post to convey the point as quickly as possible, but I also find it nicely fits within the overall theme of the week.

Nilay Pitel coined “Google Zero” to reflect the reality that Google (but the broader AI industry as well) is shifting from a triaging system that provides the would-be searcher a link to your content to know an AI tool either providing the individual a response or an AI agent receiving the content without a human recipient. As a knowledge worker, I am not sure how to come to terms with this change. On one end (as a consumer), I find it beneficial to quickly skim an AI overview (instead of scrolling through a website) to find an answer to a simple question, like where is a specific part in my vehicle. And I recognize the overviews are not always right, but they have gotten better and get straight to the point. That said, as a producer, I find it incredibly daunting to come to terms with this new reality. Take, for example, this post. Is it going into the void to be scrapped by an AI model one day, or will it appear in an AI overview for someone to quickly skim but not read the entire article?

I am really not sure how to navigate this current situation. But at least I am, and hopefully this post put this on your radar if you were not aware.

Wondering if you have thought of anything to navigate this?

Emanuel