5 Reasons I’m Bullish on A.I. Sending More Traffic to Web Publishers

Hey fellow Web publishers (and AI doomers).

I’m bullish on A.I. sending more (not less) traffic to Web publishers. If you believe me, you can stop reading.

But if you’re an SEO doomer (e.g. someone worried about an eventual decline of Google traffic), read on!

There are 5 things I’m looking at right now that give me HUGE optimism:

1) Perplexity’s Early #s

Perplexity is the first to actively give links to Web Publishers with their answers and “Doulbe-Digit” percentage of Perplexity users click through to those links says Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko (source)

Let’s call Perplexity’s number 30% to 40% for fun.

That’s about half of the 66% that click through to Google’s blue links (source)

2) ChatGPT, Claude et al Adding Links

I expect ChatGPT and Claude (more well-funded than Perplexity) to add more and more links to their search results.

Why?

Two reasons: A) they continue to strike licensing deals with publishers (News Corp, AP, People Mag, etc.) that involve link exchange; and B) they are threatened with lawsuits (NY Times) and that will make them compromise for the suitors and (eventually) smaller publishers.

Plus,the AI Answer Engines will work hard with Web Publishers because they want our data (to train LLMs).

3) An Explosion in A.I.-enabled Devices

And the devices we use to search the Web will only increase in the near future.

Smart Phone continues to grow 7.8% YoY (source)

And A.I. itself will allow explosive growth in Answer Engine queries via searches from such new devices such as Smart Glasses, watches and cars

4) A Lot More People on the Internet

33% of the world is still NOT on the Internet! (source)

5) An Explosion in A.I. Agents

Oh, and soon (if you believe Reid Hoffman and others (I do) about us all using A.I. agents, then in the next few years we will each will have a few A.I. agents searching the Web on our behalf).

That means that our A.I. agents will be searching the Web while we eat, sleep, have sex or whatever.

Google might see a decline in queries over the long haul.

But I’m bullish that the above will more than make up for it.

Thx for reading!

Rob Kelly. Content Creator on the Web

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