BOOM! 50% Drop in Web Traffic for Business Insider and WashPost. ChatGPT is #5 Website in the World. The "SEO Bloodbath" is Well Underway
Do you understand implications to your business of the MATERIAL shift of traffic from search engines to LLM/AI?
Thank You for Being a Reader
Thank you for being one of 10,000 subscribers to my newsletter, which consistently achieves an open rate of 40%+ .
Loyal readers come from a wide range of world-class organizations, including: Fidelity, UBS, Bank of America, Merck, Pfizer, Roche, Bayer, AIG, Prudential, Nationwide, Travelers, Audax Group, HIG, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Microsoft, OpenAI, Seekr, Mistral, Google, Pryon, Amazon, Liquid AI, Harvey.AI, Databricks, Cloudflare, Intel, McKinsey, PwC, Accenture, BCG, Bain, IBM, and Deloitte.
GenAI Drives 50% Drop in Web Traffic at Business Insider and The Washington Post
The “SCE Bloodbath” is well underway as the world transitions from traditional Search Engines (e.g., Google) to Answer Engines (e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity) and ultimately to Task Engines.
Executives and business leaders must understand the implications of this shift—especially in areas like product discovery, product evaluation, and company hiring.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and The Washington Post have suffered devastating declines in web traffic—clear signs of the disruption underway.
Companies are also telling us they are seeing a drop in Google-generated traffic, as Google works to keep more of the user experience “in the Google house.”
ChatGPT is now the FIFTH most visited website, ranking above Twitter and Wikipedia.
OpenAI continues to see massive adoption, now operating at a $10 billion revenue run rate with 125 million daily users. ChatGPT.com was the fifth most trafficked website in May and June, surpassing both Wikipedia and X/Twitter.
Navigating these new realities has given rise to a wave of startups to help companies navigate and thrive in this new world.
While no one knows the exact best way to optimize your company’s website, emerging best practices include incorporating more Q&A content, FAQs, explanations, and unlocking data trapped in PDFs.
One new reality is that these Answer Engines are “truth seekers” and are currently not easily manipulated. If you have a bad product with poor reviews, you can no longer hide behind a flood of SEO and Google Ads.
Note: This also includes research about your product and your company’s culture by job seekers. LLMs lower the water to truth.
Last week, during our Weekly “Learning Lab”, Rosemary Brisco and Mike Ensing had a great, detailed discussion on this topic. You can listen to the recording here.
Executives and AI leaders need to be aware of this trend and ensure that both senior leadership and marketing teams are actively monitoring and adapting—because the SEO Bloodbath has arrived.
Popular articles written by Paul Baier
Attend our 3rd annual conference, GAI World 2025, celebrating and learning from corporate leaders IN PRODUCTION with GenAI applications. Our conference is Sep 29-30 in Boston (we sold out the last 2 years). Watch highlight video and all the energy from our 2024 sold-out conference here.
Pete Blackshaw, CEO of Brankrank.A, is one of the speakers at our conference and will be speaking about this. Below are his observations.
We’ve entered the Answer Economy, where generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are rewriting the rules of brand visibility and trust.
It’s not just about the first impression — it’s about "Prompted Path to Purchase," a journey shaped by questions at every stage:
"What’s the best for me?”
“How do I use this?”
“Is it safe?” “What if it breaks?”
Tell me about key features?
Brands that win are the ones that show up with clear, credible, AI-ready answers — not just clever messaging. This requires requires fresh organizational thinking:
R&D must have a seat at the content table
eCommerce and performance marketing must break out of their silos
Consumer Services — often the original source of answers — is more strategic than ever
Org agility to immediately converge answer signals to action is critical
And let’s not forget the boring basics: FAQs, product specs, structured data, and search-friendly content still carry the day.
Other Speakers
Join us Monday Jun 16 at 7p ET / 4p at our Weekly Learning Lab. Signup via Meetup
"A calm mind brings strength" — Dalai Lama
Onward,
Paul
.