How do you plan to move forward with the coming death of websites?

[gatormark]

How do you foresee the future of digital content evolving as traditional websites decline? Also, how do you plan to move forward in light of the imminent death of websites as we know it?

[lucy24]

:: insert obvious Mark Twain quote here ::

[seokees]

Great question, I want(ed) to ask. But not have a real answer to. Thinking about starting a newsletter (with paid traffic to get subs) or starting an agency in email marketing. But not really motivated, though. I want to give my websites another go, new direction etc. Find a loophole, new way someday, where my current model survives. It is not that people don't want my websites and services, just the middlemen (plural yes).

[Juniya]

People are still going to need new information, just like books have survived the ebook era, I think websites will survive for awhile longer. A good *enough percentage of people will still choose to read info/stories/data rather than watch the video version on tiktok/youtube/instagram/social media.

Gamification of websites(or whatever they evolve into) is what is next.

[seokees]

But the amount of visitors will be too low for many sites to survive. That is not because of market forces, lower demand, quality of sites. Just one party, well just a few online parties (you know who), whom demand ransom (i.e. ads).

[Martin Potter]

For me, the future looks bleak. I wonder if it might take some kind of major event to make the general public realize that a summary composed by some artificial "intelligence" (so-called) is not really the answer that they need or that they should want. Maybe the collapse of a major building or bridge somewhere in the world, that was designed using AI, and where the government investigation proved the AI was responsible for the engineering failure, prompting them to ban the use of AI for anything within their country. Would such an event and its fallout shift world public opinion enough to reverse the current trend?

I don't know. Maybe someone here can give us hope.

[Martin Potter]

Then there is the use of AI to further the goals (gains) of rampant capitalism and authoritarianism. What can possibly slow or reverse that?

[Kendo]

I was thinking about 300 acres somewhere there is no Internet. But that may have to be 600 acres.

[londrum]

Another search engine will come along eventually.
Google is just the Yellow Pages (or was)

[gatormark]

I give it less than three years. And, that’s being optimistic. Unless your website is built around a community, it’s going to be very difficult to survive or rationalize putting so much effort into something that produces so little results financially. I do like the gamification idea. I’ll have to see how I can implement that into my community.

As far as my informational websites, they will die. There’s no getting around that.

[londrum]

the AI bubble bursting is supposed to be just around the corner
that's what they've been saying the last few weeks anyway

[gatormark]

the AI bubble bursting is supposed to be just around the corner
that's what they've been saying the last few weeks anyway

@londrum, the people who say that clearly do not understand human nature.

[Martin Potter]

As far as my informational websites, they will die. There’s no getting around that.

That is all that my own website is, informational. And I can't see surviving being sucked dry by the AI summarizers. Very few people seem to want technical details anymore, that they can compare with their own situations and make informed decisions. The number of organic visitors to my site has decreased to at most half, over the last year.

Horrible thought -- Maybe if I had ads on my site (of which there are none), more people would visit again. Ha!

[tangor]

Some of us will stubborn along, satisfied with VISITORS in the tens to hundreds per day. Offering a product that is walled against AI, and if "good enough" for those few who want the real deal will eventually figure out a way to monetize (if that is the goal). A few will do it just because of the love, the art (content of all kinds), and because hosting can be REALLY CHEAP for a small fry. :)

Any change in the last specification above WILL KILL WEBSITES.

It's always about the money, both what you can make and WHAT YOU HAVE TO SPEND.

Vanity publishing will survive no matter what. The operative word is VANITY.

[gatormark]

@tangor, I am averaging about 26,000 AdSense page views a day and 400 ad clicks. I am still not making much money. It's crazy how quickly things negatively changed for me with the August update and AI.

[Whitey]

I don’t think websites are dying, just their monopoly as the main interface to search.

AI summaries and agents are cutting out the middle layer, so survival now means being ingested, not just indexed. That means structured data, clear topical authority, and content that AI can reference or attribute. Add some unique functionality into websites such as stronger personalization with unique data or content, perhaps agentic ai, together with a "digital omni presence" to make the "brand" or "authority" more appealing.

I imagine tools are, or will be sprouting up everywhere in response to this new phase to help websites or inspire them, hopefully.

The goal shifts from ranking pages to building entities - sites that feed clean signals into AI ecosystems and stand as trusted sources.

[tangor]

The goal shifts from ranking pages to building entities - sites that feed clean signals into AI ecosystems and stand as trusted sources.

IE. Back to the beginning:

UNIQUE, FRESH, ORIGINAL.

Nothing has changed, only the interface which tends to homogenize things... so you have to be:

MORE UNIQUE, MORE FRESH, MORE ORIGINAL

And in a world with a billion or so websites that's going to be a VERY TOUGH ROW TO HOE!

Meanwhile, websites are not dead. Copy cats, scammers, scrapers, bad actors, et al. will be more hard pressed to work the game. LEGITIMATE and ORIGINAL content and inspiration will continue to be valued.

Some things local or regional will rise to the top, LOCAL OR REGIONAL, but only the leaders---not the wannabes and followers...

ECOM will probably be hit hardest because of product overlap and distribution, only the most hardy and BRAND aware will be successful.

Some niches will disappear, such as health and pharma, simply because AI will have better homogenized answers (and of course nation/state controls on such). Other topics/niches will lose traction as AI answers most before a site link is even needed, especially if those sites rely on data from other sites/databases are involved.

The big elephant in the room is that g no longer wants to play the old game of "paste a link and we'll pay you something". Today it is "paste a link and this is what you get." The screws have been tightened and will continue to squeeze simply because they are the "only" game in town and write the rules without consultation, primarily based on their current stock price and need of revenue.

ALL THIS DOOM AND GLOOM OF THE DEATH OF WEBSITES IS SILLY. Websites won't die simply because g kills the golden goose. Millions of websites never depended on g in the first place! Websites that have to close BECAUSE THE GOLDEN GOOSE WAS ALL THEY HAD is a different story---indicating an eggs-in-one-basket methodology sans an actual business plan or even a product unique that wasn't available from a zillion others.

The way forward is to NOT QUIT! For some it might mean a pause to rethink and retool, but the future remains just as bright, just as fulsome, and CAN be a gold-mine in the making.

[Kendo]

I have to disagree with a lot of what I read here.

For example, after the last ranking changes, my oldest web pages are now ranking on first page of search while all the pages that were super optimised cannot be found within 100 results, so the "fresh content idea" is a myth. This may in part be due to backlinks - new pages don't have backlinks but old pages do.

As for "eggs in one basket", we created a new site and brand for each of our web services, but I am now convinced that we should have put everything under the one roof.