[RealCodingOtaku]

Most of all websites will lose their traffic, some already did.

- People using the search console see the drop

- Product owners scratch their head

- Investors backing out because not having many visitors

- Small bloggers adding more ads because their revenue is dropping

- Sponsors backing out from their blogs because it's loosing more visitors

- Small web crumbling

- People google what is happening

- Google says 'The "small web"—independent blogs, personal forums, and niche websites—is disappearing due to corporate consolidation, aggressive AI-driven search indexing, and high maintenance costs. These factors have pushed independent creators onto walled-garden social media apps, leaving personal websites to suffer from "link rot".'

[acatton]

Don't worry about the small web. Most people running the small web don't do it for others but themselves. They don't care whether they have 5 visitors or 1 million. Visitors are just the cherry on top, my main reason for maintaining a small web page is to put down my thoughts, organize them, go back to them if I need to, and helping whichever stranger stumbles upon them along the way.

The small web and indie web audience doesn't use google. They use RSS readers:

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/rss-feeds-send-me-more-traf...

https://matduggan.com/you-can-absolutely-have-an-rss-depende...

Small web is there to stay, big tech can't do much about it:

https://www.citationneeded.news/we-can-have-a-different-web/

The only threats to small web are:

* the lack of net neutrality

* lack of competition in the the PC component industry which is the backbone of cheap VPSes and hosting services

* browser monopoly, as any monopolistic browser could impose their small-web-unfriendly version of the web

[RealCodingOtaku]

The main threat to small web is the reachability, I serve Atom and JSON feed, support microformats, microsub, and micropub, syndicate my posts to other platforms all without ads or telemetry. But all that effort means nothing if it doesn't reach the intended user base, it's just shouting at the void.

We can have a small community somewhere, but people who search for niche things should find them -- which used to be search engines after the .com boom and the burst. Now we are back to the small forms again, which is lacking the reach because--- new people can't reach the forms as they can't find them in the first place.

If someone new to the internet find the website, then nothing else matters.

[techterrier]

hello, smol webber here (wildlife photos), can confirm the drop off is happening. I dont care about my own site tho, its just a convenient place to put things. Id be doing exactly the same for 1 user or 1 million users.

https://dombarker.co.uk/

[cafebabbe]

Amazing pictures, thanks for sharing!