Same. However, for a while, I did not need to work much, and indulging in such things was an absolute delight. It was entertainment, but it also benefited me when I actually worked.

Oh hey, author here. Here's the post text:

[graph showing 7 years of steady growth, then a 70% traffic drop starting when AI overviews were released]

AI is killing All About Berlin. When you Googled something, you used to get a link to my website. Now you get an AI-generated answer trained on my work.

This has a devastating impact on traffic. It's hard to fund my work with 70% fewer visitors. In another year, it will be impossible. Instead of writing new guides, I spend my days preparing for that future.

Yesterday, Google announced two things: AI-generated answers will completely replace search results, and AI-generated answers will soon contain ads.

This is the future of the web. I don't know where All About Berlin fits in that future.

For a bit of context:

https://allaboutberlin.com/

https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/all-about-berlin

I've spent a lot of time in Berlin, and thanks to your website it was easier than expected.

:)

I'm a fan of the website. Sorry to see it's happening. Not sure what the AI models would train on when nobody has incentives to put out useful information on the web? Grim situation :(

I have seen many recipe websites do the same recently. All the big sites require an account too now.

Do they still have the long winded story about the author's grandfather's apple tree which gave only sour fruits?

That was for SEO/copyright reasons, so I guess not?

This mostly feels like a meme though. Most of the recipes I see have instructions, notes and photos, then a recipe. It's unfortunate that people think of the worst offender and cheer for the death of the independent web.

You must know which sites to go to. As a casual, I encounter the SEO spam every single time.

And the fact that LLMs are actively taking traffic away from them

Do you trust Google to do a better job?

Perplexity does not control who gets traffic on the internet. They don't own a significant percentage of the mobile OS, browse and online search market share. They can't force the industry in one way or the other, consequences be damned.

If Perplexity replaced Google as the way people searched for things, then they would, and sites would still take a hit to their traffic from Google losing users.

No money and no audience.

Recognition and gratitude keeps me going. Money pays the bills, but if that was the only concern, I'd still be a software developer.

Anonymously feeding the slop machine is nothing like it.

LLM already took around 70% of my traffic. I live from that website. I don’t think it will survive another two years, and updating it already feels pointless. Why choose my words so carefully when Google will just scramble them?

Not every website is a blog. Substack is not suited to guides and evergreen information.

That’s the thing, they have altered the deal. You still feed the machine but you get no traffic. Keep writing that helpful stuff though!