[ushimitsudoki]

Is it possible that the users who used to find us through Google are now satisfied with AI chat summaries and no longer feel the need to click through to the actual page?

Meanwhile, the long-time users who subscribed via RSS are still showing up like they always have. If this is the case, it’s a bit of a sad reality for content creators.

[nicbou]

Yes. It caused a major drop in CTR for search. Google Zero is the term for it. It’s murderous for information websites. On my side, traffic is down roughly 70% on the website I live from.

It’s still part of the training data though. Not that I consented to this.

[archleaf]

Do you get attribution from the content they show from your sites at all? Did you notice more direct traffic by any chance?

[nicbou]

Very rarely. AI traffic is a tiny tiny fraction of total traffic. ChatGPT and Gemini mostly spit out unattributed information, except when queries trigger a web search.

I notice many 404s from ChatGPT to hallucinated URLs on my website. Sometimes it hallucinates guides about topics I never covered. So I'm getting cited for things I didn't even say!

I also notice that for other topics, the cited sources are crap. The best shaver is a Braun shaver according to Braun.com, and two comments on a 6 years old reddit thread about a different topic.