Is AI hurting your web traffic?

Dr. Ryan Ries here, back with this week’s Mission Matrix. 

This week, I was in San Francisco to meet with AWS teams and had the opportunity to chat about genAI use cases that customers have been interested in. It got me thinking about some interesting data on how AI is changing businesses… whether they like it or not.

The Quiet Disruption: AI vs. Traditional Web Traffic

AI is quietly upending the business models of everyone’s websites, and the data doesn't lie. 

Even huge platforms like WebMD, G2, and Chegg - once fueled by SEO and ad revenue - are losing traffic as AI-powered search and chatbots deliver instant answers. 

Users no longer need to click through pages when AI summarizes everything in seconds.

We're witnessing the next significant shift in tech, and the timing aligns perfectly with major AI milestones:

• Nov 30, 2022 – ChatGPT launches
• Mar 14, 2023 – GPT-4 released
• May 14, 2024 – Google rolls out AI Overviews

Who's Losing? Troubling Traffic Trends

Let's look at who's getting hit hardest:

WebMD: Once the place where every symptom search led to cancer diagnoses, they're now crashing and burning with timing that aligns perfectly with major AI releases. That said, they still pull in about 90M visits monthly.

Quora, once the go-to Q&A platform, is struggling as AI delivers faster, more reliable answers. Yet, it still attracts nearly 1 billion visits monthly.

Stack Overflow: The developer's paradise faces direct competition from Amazon Q Developer and Claude, which can generate and debug code instantly. As AI takes over, the community is fading, though they still attract around 200M visits monthly.

Chegg: The student platform is getting schooled by AI. Interestingly, they're fighting back by suing Google over AI snippets. Not sure what they expect... Google controls the traffic, and that's the risk of relying on someone else's distribution.

G2: The software review platform is experiencing a huge drop in traffic. This one's particularly rough.

CNET: The tech news site has seen a staggering 70% traffic drop from 4 years ago. They still pull in 50 million visits monthly – an impressive volume – but it's a steep drop from the 150 million they once had.

Across the board, our marketing team told me businesses are seeing an average 34% drop in website traffic. 

Who's Winning? The Resilient Platforms

But not all is doom and gloom for everyone! Some platforms are thriving:

Reddit: Many claim they're impacted, but traffic data tells a different story – they are CRUSHING it. Why? Probably because people are gravitating toward authentic content and a sense of community. Their traffic is in the billions. I read that Reddit also has a massive Google partnership… so that might also be helping.

Wikipedia: Despite AI's rise, they're staying afloat with over 5B visits monthly. However, research AI tools will probably hit them eventually.

Substack: User-generated content is a big trend. Substack is seeing impressive growth as people seek authentic voices and perspectives.

What This Means For Your Business

AI isn't just a trendy buzzword. It's fundamentally reshaping how users consume information online. 

The key takeaways for any business should be:

1. Don't rely solely on SEO and traditional content marketing – AI is disrupting these channels.
2. Focus on building community and authentic connections that AI can't easily replicate. Thought Leadership and user-generated content are becoming more important than ever.
3. Consider how you can leverage AI tools like Amazon Q (which we discussed previously) to enhance your own offerings.
4. Remember my golden rule: don't do AI for AI's sake – have a clear business case with ROI.

Let me know your thoughts

Have you noticed AI impacting your website traffic or business model?

Also, we’ve got two upcoming generative AI ask us anything events coming up. Grab the links to register here: 

May 13th

June 17th

Until next time,
Ryan

Now, for this week’s AI-generated image and the prompt I used to create it. 

An image of a very tall muppet that is standing at his standing desk working on his computer. The muppet is in the style of Animal. On the screen you have a line graph that is going down over time. There is a poster that says "SEO for the win!"

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